EXPLORING QUEER FEARS AND MONSTROSITY WITH WYATT FIELDS
- Kim Alexis Adversario
- Nov 15, 2025
- 4 min read
Kim Alexis: Part of your project incorporates a passionate and inquisitive diary entry. The first line, “I gave birth to myself and it frightens you”, is both striking and beautiful. For centuries, queerness has been a misunderstood and feared lifestyle. What motivates you to tell the stories of queer identity through your work?
Wyatt: Both this [specific] project and all of my work are told through a queer lens, just from the way I see the world. To me, queerness is an action and an entire state of being and doing; [it’s] not just a label because I happen to like guys or the way I happened to be born in this time that we live in.
To me, it's so important to acknowledge how radical existing as myself is after what the people who came before me went through and what is going on right now. Censorship is growing more and more towards queerness, and people don't want to see it, and people try to pretend it doesn't exist. So, in my opinion, through [my art] and the way I like to play with extremes, my stuff tends to either deal with an idealized version of life–what things could be like [as] dreamy and beyond the constraints of the world today–or they confront our reality and make fun of it and turn it on its head because it's all made up and it's completely ridiculous. That's just the word that I keep saying, because it's ridiculous.
But to me, queerness is political and it is radical. I can't separate it from my work, because it's who I am.
For this [artwork], I didn't want to only focus on the fear of queer and trans people. So with my writing specifically, I shed light on what society chooses to ignore, which is the bravery and divinity of what it means to look outside of what society has told you, and make you make yourself. Because it is a kind of divine act in a way, and a mad science experiment, and a supernatural phenomenon, and it should be looked at with awe instead of fear.
Because it is a kind of divine act in a way, and a mad science experiment, and a supernatural phenomenon, and it should be looked at with awe instead of fear.
K: Describe your creative process for this project. How did you come up with this idea?
W: Since the theme is “fear” for this issue, I was obviously exploring my own and what's always in the back of my head: identity, being perceived, and loneliness. I was honestly stuck between this theme of queerness and another really important fear [to me], which is also informed by society's reactions to the world around us: apathy.
I wanted to do a project [that] explores just how [prevalent] apathy in the world today towards the atrocities that we see happening in Palestine, Sudan, and ICE terrorizing our communities. And sometimes it feels like the non-reaction that people are having is making it even scarier. I decided to go with the way trans people are being treated now. I focused on a fear that is not so soul-crushing and turned it into a celebration, poking fun at how [society is afraid of] queer people and queerness in general.
I focused on a fear that is not so soul-crushing and turned it into a celebration, poking fun at HOW [society is afraid of] queer people and queerness in general.
[It’s] a campy celebration and peek into the life of the monstrous freak that people seem to think we are.
K: Between moving from Memphis to San Francisco, do you think your relationship to your art has evolved? Specifically, was there anything new or insightful that you discovered about yourself due to your experiences living in these two culturally different cities?
W: The move from the South to San Francisco is what informed me as an artist, to be honest. Growing up in Memphis. I've always loved art. I've always loved writing, movies and photos. My mom was a photographer on the side and I grew up watching so many movies, but I never really thought that I could be on the “making” side of things because those resources just weren't available to me. My life in Memphis was more focused on survival than thriving and focusing creatively.
When I moved out here for school and took my first film classes, it kind of shifted my mindset. I've always been really into social justice, and I was adamant about being a journalist and I had to take all these creative classes to get into that as well, and I realized I can talk about important things while at the same time making beautiful things. That's kind of my mindset as an artist.
Something really important to me is [having] people understand how culturally relevant and rich the South is. So many of the things we love are from and rooted in the South. That's just something I really want to get across to people because [there tends to be] a certain idea of the South and people who come from there. While there are really terrifying and backwards places [there] — just like around the entire country— it is also home to the biggest queer and biggest Black populations in our country.
I would say that growing up in that kind of environment (especially Memphis, which is one of the most diverse cities in the country and where Martin Luther King was shot, which we recognize every year) and you feeling the energy of the movement just walking the streets, it informed me as a person. Even if what I'm making isn't explicitly political or radical, it's gonna come across in the words that I write and just the mindset that I have when I'm making the thing.
You can see Wyatt Fields' full final project by purchasing Issue 04: Amygdala.
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