Captive Bait: The Work of Jose Da Silva

This essay looks at the work of Jose Da Silva, a young Brisbane artist whose work explores the way pornographic images and acts of violence shape gay male subjectivity. Da Silva underscores the way sexual violence is repeatedly fetishised and performed in gay porn, and by extension queer culture. Da Silva's work is bait, designed to lure an audience with its amateur porn pull. Once captive, an audience finds itself figuratively trapped in a seedy backroom where sexual violence is not simply patterned on recognisable social problems like homo hate crimes and/or gay male domestic violence.