CULTUREEDIT is pleased to present The Masterbation Book by Kyle, a rare and compelling exhibition of 32 collages completed in 1988 by the mononymous artist Kyle. Raw, political, and deeply personal, Kyle’s work is a profound act of resistance and self-expression during a time of near-total queer invisibility. 

Born in Alabama in the early 1960s, Kyle came of age in an era and region where being gay was not only taboo but punishable, sometimes violently so. Like the show's co-curator, James White, who was raised in neighboring Mississippi, Kyle found no representation or safety in his formative years. In a harrowing chapter of his life, Kyle was subjected to an exorcism by his father, an itinerant preacher, and their congregation in an effort to “cure him of the gay demon.”

Fleeing the South immediately after high school, Kyle found refuge in New York City, enrolling in art school where, in his words, he “truly felt alive” for the first time. "Queer visibility was almost non-existent in the South until the late 1970s,” says White. “So Kyle created a visual language to say: I exist. I matter.” His collages subvert expectations. Though composed of cut-up pornographic imagery, they are not erotic in the traditional sense. They function more like surrealist explorations of identity and fragmentation, echoing the work of Hans Bellmer. These compositions are sometimes playful, often melancholic, and always political, affirming queer presence in a world that sought to erase it.

Tragically, Kyle died by suicide, leaving behind not only a body of evocative work but also a powerful cautionary tale.

The Masterbation Book now stands as both artifact and testimony—documenting queer existence, longing, and loss amid the AIDS crisis and the cultural erasure of the 1980s.

As Susan Sontag once wrote, “Photography is the inventory of mortality.” Kyle’s collages, like time capsules, preserve lives and bodies that would otherwise be forgotten or erased—models from adult magazines, lovers lost to the epidemic, and Kyle himself.

The exhibition arrives at a crucial cultural moment. With LGBTQ+ rights again under threat, including the recent removal of Harvey Milk’s name from a U.S. Navy vessel by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who cited a lack of “warrior ethos,” this exhibition affirms that queer resistance has always been warrior-like. “If Hegseth wants a warrior,” White states, “he should look no further than any trans person living openly in America today.”

The Masterbation Book is not just an art show—it is a call to remember, to resist, and to reclaim visibility.