Bootblack traces the intimate histories and economies of queer nightlife, kink culture, and the material conditions that shaped queer survival during the HIV/AIDS crisis. The suspended latex apparatus gestures towards both erotic surface and protective barrier, while also invoking the figure of the bootblack—long a caretaker of fetish materials like leather, latex, and rubber—which anchors the installation in traditions of community maintenance and kinship. 

The latex, both materially and symbolically, is set in relief against the violence of the 1980s and 1990s when queer bodies were vilified, pathologized, and physically treated as waste, often discarded in black trash bags.

Embedded within the installation’s soundscape, contemporary lived testimonies infuse the work with personal and collective memory. Composed entirely of words gathered in interviews with queer community members about the healing capacity of queer nightlife, the sound illuminates the tactile labor and erotics that sustain queer resistance.