2020 MFA Thesis Work
Logics of Non-Exchange

Kaeten Bonli (b. 1992, Saskatchewan) is an interdisciplinary visual artist, currently based in New York.

Kaeten Bonli’s work plays with language, code and cultural motifs: signifiers that inform and respond to collective identities. In his series of silk paintings, Ironica, Kaeten examines the role of parody in queer internet culture, distilling the critical urgency and social potency in its nuanced slang.

Kaeten’s paintings are created through a combination of traditional dyeing techniques, referencing methods and materials of textile design that constitute myriad cultural eras. Illustrations depicting erotic role-play are layered on stretched silk with patterns and motifs lifted from internet memes. This overlapping of imagery suggests a common thread between the subversion of power dynamics in fetish culture, and the systemic critique embedded in meme culture. Both entail parody, curiosity, and longing.

Each piece in the series flirts with the conceptual posture of ‘fetishizing the oppressor,’ a term which refers to a playful transgression of traditional power structures through an activation of sadomasochistic parody. Through a collapsing of cultural content, and a narrative of erotic unbecoming, Kaeten’s body of work revels in the self-reflexive cynicism of the millennial queer, offering fetish as an optimistic alternative to anxiety.