Host names an invitation, whether the person presenting an event or the location that makes that presentation possible. For Brown that steward or site darts between biology, geology, and even technology. The host can be the organism sustaining a parasite or enabling a virus to replicate; it also encompasses the more reciprocal exchanges of symbiosis. It offers the intimacy of an interior whilst equally declaring the gravity of the great outdoors.

What the eye assumes to be an ode to the human figure slowly – and surely – slips almost imperceptibly into the velvety wobble of abstraction, yet it is through this very slippage that Silveria Martin’s image – the Queer male body – becomes more, not less, visible. The harder you look, the more you see. The more you see, the less you know. The less you know, the harder you believe (or doubt) what the painting says, encouraging you to look harder once more. And so Silveria Martin’s cunning carousel of looking turns.