Years after losing a parent, I began to have extremely vivid dreams that revolved around bringing my loved one back to life, only to lose them right before waking up. Everything about these felt so real, it was like a memory, or an event that actually took place in my life. I would awake extremely confused and upset after each one. I began to question: why do grief, love, desire, restraint, control, sex, and disgust all fill the same space?

GLARE is used as a link between the past and present through photographic motifs of light, reflections, and texture. Gould’s current practice seeks to explore the nuance within specific words to consider their dual meanings: like ‘inversion’ being an outdated term for the word ‘homosexuality’, but a current term for a reversal; or ‘glare’ being light reflection or an intense stare. The multiplicities within words become the basis for constructing a visual narrative from a queer perspective.

Reflecting vs Reflection, Glance vs Glare. As intangible, light-based concepts, Gould analyzes how inversion and glare can be used to weave together a constructed reality and a lived experience. Caught between two worlds–dreaming and lucidity– GLARE was written to untangle why death, sex, grief, and love seem to all twist together at night.