Bryan Defjan, Stanford University
Plaster and plaster casts on canvas; 30 x 40 in.
From the artist:
Unquiet bodies is a visceral meditation on the silent, often invisible struggle of queer existence within heteronormative structures. Casts of hands emerge from and sink into a dense, chalky terrain of plaster—frozen mid-motion, reaching, clawing, pushing against a surface that offers no clear escape. These hands embody a psychological resistance to the systems that dictate who we’re allowed to be and what parts of ourselves must remain buried to survive.
This work stems from a deeply personal reckoning with queerness, how it is simultaneously beautiful and heavy, liberating and lonely. The plaster terrain mirrors the internalized sediment of silence that accumulates from years of navigating spaces not built for queer bodies. The whiteness of the material suggests both erasure and exposure, acting as a metaphor for assimilation and purity politics.
The indistinct source of entrapment is intentional, reflecting the layered forces that shape queer repression. The figures fight not just to escape but to assert existence in a world that too often renders queerness invisible.