Can portraiture offer a site of refuge from male aggression?

I felt compelled to include the influence of violence and its aftermath in my most recent artist statement. Here’s an excerpt, written by Maria Isabel Martinez, which you can find in full on my About page:

“His work exists within the dissociative tension between one’s inner experience of selfhood and the projected cultural scripts about one’s identity. Drawing heavily on his own intimate relationships for subject matter and emphasizing the processual aspect of painting, Delisca’s work asks: Can portraiture offer a site of refuge from male aggression? Can the relational exchange essential to portraiture expand an artist’s rendering? Can it challenge and deepen a viewer’s perceptions?”

I want to emphasize the ability of portraiture to create a distance from aggression and personhood. Reflecting on my early years, I recall an intense fear of men, to the point where I was excused from mandatory all-male high school gym classes and avoided classes with male teachers. I couldn’t look at a stranger without feeling an overwhelming urge to shrink; this reaction was influenced by specific traumas I won’t name at this moment. I have worked with mental health professionals, mentors, and community members for a long time to taper down my defensive reactions and avoid shutting down completely. I got involved in the Toronto kiki ballroom scene and volunteered at organizations focused on abuse. I tried to counter my fear through various means, including hookups and rushed, empty professions of love.

While I’m not sure how to measure my success in conquering my fear of men, from a younger perspective, I’ve made miles of progress. However, my current self feels like I’m just getting started, even though I have a career dedicated to sitting with men, listening to their stories, and rendering their likenesses, yet I still feel like I’m on the sidelines, waiting to be fully engaged and accepted. Despite this, portraiture chose me, and I chose it. It’s ironic that I made the decision to stare at men all day when I could barely hold eye contact with them.

Portraiture became a way to intimately inspect the men around me and, occasionally, to look deeply into myself. An early example of this was my work with a collective of artists on a photo essay. This project, known as the Carefree Black Boy Project, allowed me to gain intimate access to the lives of Black men across Toronto. I began as an eager 16-year-old high schooler, inspired by the expanding possibilities of life as a Black man depicted in viral photos from Afropunk and Humans Of New York. Through my interviews with men in Toronto, I saw a profoundly human experience in their lives as they shared the pressures and excitements they faced. Many of us shared the same insecurities, which made them real and approachable to me. It inspired a sense of hope that I could reconnect with myself despite the fears and traumas I held onto. More than wanting to heal the pain of past wrongs, I felt an ardent desire to be unburdened and free—to fulfill a long-deferred dream, an inherited yearning.

Throughout my painting career, I felt like I was using intimacy to cover up the reality of the violence I’ve endured. There are moments when I feel fearful of depicting certain things—what could I be revealing? This fear becomes more daunting when I consider the thoughts and feelings of my subjects. I am still shedding the mindset of thinking “everything’s my fault” or that “I’m airing out dirty laundry.”I do my best to remember that, I’m just revealing what has always been there, without shame.

My work doesn’t exist outside the realm of violence or the fear of it; it is, in large part, created in response to it. As my understanding evolves, so does my practice and my role in this context.

I am incredibly grateful to my younger self for the countless attempts to find safety within my own skin and to the many artists, peers, and professionals who have assisted me on this journey. My work has always been a rebellion against the traumatizing, soul-eroding circumstances that pulled me away from myself. Sharing my fantasy of intimacy and disrupting the core nature of violence—which derails us from the path of selfhood and leaves us constantly bracing for future harms—has been liberating. I am free. I am fulfilling generations of deferred dreams.