Islands Are Not Forever, a series of large-scale drawings that are installed as an immersive environment, holds a mirror to the bewildering complexities of collective and personal queer histories. Brooks’ drawings create a panoramic landscape inhabited by film stars, artists, and friends, adorned with both personal and cultural motifs, locales, and artistic innuendos. His subjects are selected from past experiences or drawn from life, arranged in an ongoing stream of recollection. The resulting impressions range from forceful to dreamlike. Some figures in confronting postures demand attention; others drift softly upon the paper, the way an image is summoned from subconsciousness. Collectively they address the notion of “Queer Time”.

John Brooks intends to continue making these drawings for the rest of his life. In that sense, Islands Are Not Forever is an incomplete cycle, a list of ingredients without instructions. Its force is born not only from visual richness, but from its function as a collective mnemonic device, an invitation to the beholder to sit in meditation in order to make a connection and to follow the path forward, or back.