More Life: A Baroque Celebration of Queer Identity
Cat Trzaskowski

More Life: A Baroque Celebration of Queer Identity is the premiere solo exhibition featuring seven new images by New York photographer, digital artist and photon sorcerer Cat Trzaskowski.

The series presents members of New York’s queer community through vibrant recreations of iconic Baroque imagery in stunning photographic composites. Representing the synthesis of years of art history research, travel, studio photography, and post production magic, Cat’s pieces utilize the visual language of Baroque art to create new images of queer transcendence.

While being beautiful objects in their own right, many of the works produced during the Italian Baroque were also commissioned with the intent of being tools of patrons in support of the Counter-Reformation. Fascinated by the idea of using beauty in art as a means of persuasion, Cat saw value in leveraging this concept as a means of affirmation rather than oppression.

More Life seeks to utilize the Baroque visual style for the purpose of creating a new Counter-Reformation: one that aims to persuade the viewer of the beauty, value and validity of the lives of those in the queer and trans community. Through these reinterpretations, the viewer is invited to consider a new paradigm of love and acceptance for all members of the queer community. In the Baroque language of “More is More” these subjects will be shown to be precious, beautiful, and deserving always of “More Life.”

About the Artist

Cat Trzaskowski (he/they) is a non-binary photographer, retoucher and digital artist based in New York City.

Cat recently earned their BFA in Photography and Related Media at the Fashion Institute of Technology, along with dual academic minors in Art History and Fashion History, Theory and Culture. They were honored to be recognized as the 2022 Gordon Parks Foundation Scholar and the 2023 FIT Photography Department Medal recipient for their work in photography, as well as the 2022 George T. Dorsch Award Recipient for excellence in art history.

A dreamer of insatiable curiosity, Cat’s art is fundamentally fueled by a lifelong yearning to push beyond the limitations of the senses and catch a glimpse of hidden worlds from just beyond the veil of perception. Piecing together fragments from fantasy and folklore, history and art, dreams and desire, they reveal intangible worlds that lie only a heartbeat away from the shutter’s close.

For more information on Cat Trzaskowski, visit their website and follow them on Instagram.