Queer Overture brings together fourteen Data Frames across seven rusted metal panels to tell a story of the artist’s journey toward creating EZRA. Individual words, phrases and questions become a connected narrative through selection and arrangement. Read together, they trace possibility, uncertainty, desire and the search for Ezra / Seth. The seven panels form a single exclamation point, giving physical structure to that personal journey.

Medium: Mixed-media assemblage
Materials: Seven rusted metal panels, fourteen Data Frames on TWA Hotel stationery, Rimowa stickers, handwritten marks and magnets; urine, sunlight and Windex used to develop the panel surfaces
Location: The Rigley Field

Components and arrangement

Fourteen Data Frames
The works on paper come from a separate set of words, phrases and questions created alongside the original Nine People. In September 2026, after completing and mounting the panels, Seth selected fourteen works that he felt most closely expressed his journey and the development of EZRA. Each panel holds two Data Frames, bringing independently made works into a shared narrative.

A narrative assembled from fragments
With connecting words supplied, the sequence reads:

“My queer overture of genius possibility asking when will the waltz begin. A dreamy battle, of Seth stuck in a loud place disco. A foggy question hanging overhead, ‘Could I love him?’ The quest for Ezra / Seth.”

The story emerged through choosing and placing the existing works. Their individual meanings became connected, forming a personal account of the journey toward EZRA.

Rusted surfaces
The seven panels were created in August 2026. The first six were treated with urine and left to bake in sunlight; the seventh was treated with Windex. These materials were chosen to explore the different rust colors and patterns they might produce.

The exclamation point
The panels are mounted vertically, with six forming the upper stroke and the seventh separated below as the dot. Both the spacing and the difference in rust color distinguish the final panel, uniting the fourteen Data Frames within one larger sign.