Christopher N. Ferreria

Who shall tame the heart of thee? (2018) ventures into the mythology of the American cowboy and the erotics that frame its performance of gender and associated sexuality. As a classic straight male archetype, the cowboy is the defining identity recognized domestically and abroad as quintessentially American—one that is at once sacred and celebrated, yet often reimagined and critically interrogated. The finely curated codes of leather chaps, boots, and cowboy hat — suffused with its own fetishized eroticism — come into full performance and begs the question of the difference between being and having.