Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Design (MDes) in Interior Studies / Exhibition + Narrative Environments
Department
Interior Architecture
First Advisor
Jeffrey Katz
Abstract
Fetishismus examines the contemporary dislocation between homosexuality and queerness. Homosexuality is the biological, innate quality of same-sex attraction. Queerness is rooted in deviance, perversion, and sociologically attached to the “other.” Although almost always used in an explicitly homosexual connotation, “queerness” is not entirely contingent on the physical engagement of homosexual acts. In historical usage, queer is used as a pejorative adjective, implying a lack of masculinity with the intent to invoke repulsion. In contemporary parlance the two are treated as synonymous. This intertwined relationship relies on the forced lack of social and spatial belonging that is rooted in a foundational or permanent reality. Prior to the proliferation of non cisgendered heterosexual individuals being tolerated, and now celebrated, to be an active homosexual required a “queer” existence. Under these constraints, any form of practiced homosexuality implied deviance and resistance. Since the legalization of gay marriage in the west, the proliferation of online existence, and the subsequent insurgence of gay media, “queer” in its definitive culturally innate provocation, is entirely optional. This thesis poses the homosexual and the queer as being tangentially related. These two “containers”, although opposite in conduct, ever-so clearly trace an innate fetishistic desire for consumption. The exhibition space is studied in this thesis as being on of these relegated “containers”, often a space for the display of queer identities, where the expression of pain, trauma, beauty, resistance, and sex is celebrated and seen, but nailed to the gallery wall . It becomes grounds for the unpalitable to be exhibited, but contained; creating an illusion of dissent, it’s confinement brings safety from “infection”, and thus, palatability. This thesis considers the paradoxical nature of the exhibition of queerness intended as disruption and visibility when the only way to be seen is to be consumed, purchased and proliferated. No matter, homosexual or queer, assimilated and othered: belonging is conditional and ephemeral. Homosexuals are often deluded into believing their participation in the consumerist zeitgeist provides a foundation for societal understanding through expressions of pain and trauma or seamless acceptance into the systems of hetero power.
The thesis will culminate in an exhibition displaying the work of queer artists that intends to exemplify the ever present battle of the innate desire of wanting to be distinctly seen, but the harsh reality that the manifestations of the artists “beings” are objects of fetishized pain, only meant to quell the creator into feeling seen, and for the consumer to taste a moment of manageable, palatable deviance. Interlaced between the displayed work there are medical-like “bladders” filled with a mysterious white liquid. The bladders are connected by tubing and pumps, as a viewer walks up to a piece the liquid of the bag stationed next to that one piece is slowly drained, until there is nothing left. Hanging from the ceiling there will be large sheets of sheer fabric with printed text, quotes of my writing, and other authors used as reference to frame, contextualize and disrupt. The fabric sheets will overlap, run parallel and perpendicular to each other; physically fragmenting, blurring, and focusing aspects of the exhibition, and mentally with texts of disorientating provocations and contextualizing statements. This construction is an active tainting of the viewing experience of the pieces, stripping the quality of escapism and self importance that the viewer may feel, a reminder of their consumption, but also an explicit reminder to those who choose to exhibit. What remains when deviance loses its danger? When is queerness sold back to us as liberation? This thesis attempts to argue that the exhibition space has become grounds of palatable control. Through this lens ,”Fetishismus” asks whether the modern homosexual body can still embody deviance through the display of the self; or whether resistance itself has been fetishized. This piece intends to interrogate the hubris of both the viewer and artist, and the reality of the exhibition as a space of fetishistic consumption and control.
Recommended Citation
Gershovich, Matthew P., "Fetishismus:Facism, Sodomy, and the Exhibition" (2026). Masters Theses. 1594.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1594
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Interior Architecture Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Queer Studies Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons, Visual Studies Commons