The GRID project was inspired by the Covid pandemic, when I started looking at another - forgotten - pandemic: Aids. GRID was the first acronym it was known by, standing for Gay Related Immune Deficiency. By coincidence, a grid is also a device used by artists of all times to assist realistic life drawing.
I quickly became interested in the metaphors and symbols connected to the disease, and produced a first series of heavily coded paintings.
In the midst of my research, I grew increasingly fascinated with the gay practice of cruising and with the elected cruising grounds. This ancient practice was for centuries the only way gay men could connect with each other, often for a quick sexual encounter before returning to their closet. In a vastly hostile world, gay men have always chosen unwanted and unproductive places for intimacy - an intimacy that was largely deemed to be equally as unwanted and unproductive. Such places exuded a sensual fascination for artists and authors, among which David Wojnarowicz, Denis Diderot and Jean Genet, who felt a connection to their forefathers, to unknown generations of gay men united in secrecy and desire.
I began juxtaposing paintings of gay cruising to paintings of anonymous and impersonal interiors, devoid of human figures to highlight a sense of disconnect and loss of community and public space, which I feel distinctively, and I cannot help explaining as one of the obscure consequences of the Aids crisis.
