Kyle Bums a Light #1 and #2 by Kyle Lasky, Wynne Neilly

Kyle Lasky:

Kyle Lasky (b. 1989, California) is a visual artist living in the woods of Upstate New York. Their photographic work centers around trans* and lesbian/post-lesbian identities in a mission to contribute to a living archive of the queer experience. Kyle’s work has been exhibited across the United States and Canada, including at the Annenburg Center for Photography (Los Angeles, CA), AGB (Burlington, ON), and Gallery 44 (Toronto, ON). In addition to their artistic practice, Kyle serves on the board of Allies in Arts, a non-profit supporting artists who are women, BIPOC, and LGBTQQIA2S+. In 2020, Kyle co-founded @transanta, a viral social media campaign that facilitated over $500,000 in holiday gifts for trans youth in need. Kyle has three cats.

Wynne Neilly:

Wynne Neilly (b.1990, Ottawa) is a queer and trans identified visual artist and award winning photographer currently working out of Hamilton, ON.  His artistic practice, most often, is an investigation into engaging with the queer and trans identity, both on an individual level and relationally within the community. Wynne’s work aims to open up a conversation around how we read and interpret intimacy between queer and trans bodies, both in the subject matter itself and from his gaze as the image maker. The content of his work seeks to reveal and support the notion of individuality and non-normative presentations of gender identity as political liberation and personal healing.

Since finishing art school in 2012, Wynne has continued to focus his practice on investigating and observing the vastness that lies within the individual identity and the outdated ideals of intimacy through portraiture and self portraiture.

Over the years, several of his works have been included in exhibitions at The Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives; Gallery TPW; Joseph Gross Gallery (Tucson); The Art Gallery of Burlington; International Center of Photography (New York); Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); The Annenberg Space for Photography (Los Angeles); and Sørlandet Art Museum (Norway).

We met at art school in 2009. We were two young, butch women, and found kinship in our masculine identities and a mutual investment in documenting the queer experience. We transitioned in tandem, and supported each other through the complicated and non-linear process of reimagining our identities and relearning how to see ourselves and be seen by others. The ease with which we express our closeness is built on a lifetime of socially accepted, affectionate “female friendships”. We took this type of closeness and kept it with us.

Years later, as two cis-presenting men —and more specifically “men who date women”—our relationship is an anomaly among representations of male friendship. When we are together, when we take photos together, when we interact publicly (online or in-person), it is with an intimacy people are only comfortable seeing between lovers, and we are assumed to be such. This tension has always interested us, and we’ve been intentionally contributing to an archive of our relationship, to continue in perpetuity. We balance on a thin line between platonic and sexual intimacy; an intimacy always ripe with romance. We create scenes in which the viewer would feel very familiar seeing a couple framed – a lazy morning in bed, getting ready for a night out, changing to swim, taking in a sunset on vacation – scenarios in which couples typically perform their relationship, but all of which actually escape that defining edge of proof. Our trans (and non-male) identities bring a nuanced component to the work, further complicating the homoerotic imagery.

While gay and queer representation in mainstream media increases, there remains a lack of exposure to–or celebration of–platonic “same-sex” intimacy. The images in our project frustrate an erotic expectation while creating space for a new truth—a representation of platonic intimacy that has not been seen before.

Kyle Lasky and Wynne Neilly