Portraits as Animal

<p><em>Portraits as Animal</em> is a gallery of self-becoming in a sunbaked house as tiny as a heart. With a toothy lyricism at turns sly and forthright Cárdenas's hunger to belong carries us from a stove bleeding a hundred kinds of caldo to his determined mitochondrial ancestors''-a journey framed by generational struggles with addiction a queerphobic church and the always-transforming land. </p><p><br></p><p>In conversation with Taos's rich artistic tradition and the brutal binding legacy of colonization Cárdenas writes through his transition acknowledging that to become a man means a lifetime of needles like the man who raised me. Here is pain and violence but here too is the assurance that we are built for this metamorphosis and can follow our past incarnations over scorched earth neon with new grass to a future of our own making.</p>