"In Catherine Opie’s photograph, Self Portrait/Cutting (1993) the artist is depicted waist up, her back to the camera, a scalpel carving on her skin depicting a childlike drawing of a house with two stick figures. Opie was questioning the attainability of this vision for someone like herself, a queer person living in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis and the accompanying spike in homophobia. Enduringly confronting, the image is a lightning rod in the conversation that has long troubled queer communities: Where do we belong, inside the institution or outside of it? And what is at stake – to our values and radical politics – when we cross over?"