Emblem is an ode to hidden languages—codes woven through history to express desire, identity, and intimacy beyond the visible. Drawing from the Victorian art of floriography and vintage wrestling and physique magazines, this work explores how objects and gestures once served as quiet vessels for queer communication. In both the language of flowers and the performative realm of wrestling, meaning is embedded in form: a pose, a petal, a flash of color, a glance meant only for certain eyes.
By pairing these visual systems, Emblem reveals a history of covert connection—allegorical spaces where masculinity, vulnerability, and longing converge. Muscle becomes metaphor; blooms become signals. These emblems speak not only to the histories of repression and risk but also to the persistence of coded joy, eroticism, and chosen understanding across generations.
