Expletive Blocks by Aaron Wilder

From the artist: My Expletive series is an experiment in the aestheticization of derogatory labels. I employ vividness, repetition, and the form of text to disempower slurs used everyday by obscuring the word through the stacking of its letters on top of each other. What remains is an aesthetic and geometric arrangement of shapes. The expletives used in these sculptures are ones commonly applied to men in order to criticize their perceived failure to meet normative masculinity expectations. These sculptures are meant to resemble children’s alphabet blocks, but their exaggerated size calls into question the impact of these slurs in the socialization process of children. This image depicts the first time all seven blocks were displayed together in room #217 of the Hotel del Sol in San Francisco as part of the Artspan members group exhibition during the stARTup Art Fair in April 2018.

See more of Aaron’s art on their website and Instagram.