Taeer M, Third date, 2026, Acrylic, pencil, watercolor on paper, 6⅛ x 9 in./15.57 x 22.86 cm (all images courtesy of the artist and Company Gallery, New York)
“He likes hot chicks! With big tits! He likes hot chicks. I like hot rats!” sneers Tayler Lee, one half of my favorite musical gruesome twosome, Genre is death, on their cataclysmically cacophonous Zappa-referencing song, “Hot Rats,” from their debut album Talk. But what if you didn’t have to choose between hot chicks with big tits or hot rats? What if you could lust after a hot chick rat with big tits who smoothly cruises a similarly busty orange bodega cat when picking up a pack of gum, admires a pretty pigeon with bedroom eyes as she preens on their romantic rooftop-with-a-view date, and paws at her sports bra-ed grey chest while being eaten out by a sexy squirrel?
No, this isn’t some furry wet dream or a heat exhaustion-induced hallucination. Or not entirely. This polyamorous hot rat and her erotic and ridiculous, fantastical and relatable life are part of Taeer M’s wonderfully nuts (sometimes literally) current exhibition, roach+world, at Company Gallery. Though she scampers through many of Taeer M’s equally zany and accomplished drawings, Rat isn’t the only star of this show. Named after two other figures—or characters, really—and their millennia-long intertwined relationship, roach+world follows a group of anthropomorphic lesbian friends and lovers as they navigate life in the big city. This city, from its 24-hour bodegas to hideous 1970s orange subway seats, looks an awful lot like our city. The characters’ species, too, represent the typically ignored or outright scorned animals that skitter and creepy-crawl around NYC. Rat is not only joined by her aforementioned mammal and avian partners—Cat, Pigeon, and Squirrel—but she has insect buddies too: a quite svelte Roach (at least in comparison to the big water bugs that startle me during heat waves) and a particularly elegant, red mirror ball-eyed, bee-stung-lipped, winged Death Fly. There are two non-animal characters, as well. World sprouts a humanoid torso from her globe head and, though only appearing in two drawings, brick-lined Building strains on the john after being infected with a landlord parasite and gabs with World at a diner over a plate of what looks to be humans.
Installation view: Taeer M., roach+world, Company Gallery, New York (Photo: Sebastian Bach)
Taeer M’s choice of animals alone pleases me. As anyone who endures the endless Instagram stories of my beloved Stuytown squirrel friends knows, I have a deep fondness for the underappreciated creatures of NYC. Yes, even rats, which I find kind of cute. Less so roaches, but Taeer M’s romantic and fragile Roach is working on my long-held discrimination against those uninvited leggy roommates. I’ve previously theorized to anyone who will listen that I hope when we, New York residents, die, we are reincarnated as critters like pigeons or rats, which seem to have a similar no-nonsense attitude and love for pizza as the human citizens with whom they share this overcrowded city. What I’ve never thought of, though, is that these too-frequently cast-aside animals could also be glamorous queer women. And I’m tickled by the notion. With roach+world part of Company’s excellent trifecta of shows, joined by Aya Brown’s stud celebration In the life and a Black lesbian sampling from the Lesbian Herstory Archives, I like to think of Taeer M’s fuzzy and winged characters as a little-seen underworld (the show is in Company’s basement space) existing alongside the other works in the gallery. Somewhere off frame, her animal friends pick out a bottle with the dykes in Aya Brown’s A HUNNID PROOF (5 DYKES IN A LIQUOR STORE), party at the West Indian Day parade in Brown’s LINK ON THE PARKWAY, and join the Salsa Soul Sisters.
Not that roach+world requires more imagination. Consisting mainly of drawings, the exhibition varies from colorful watercolors to soft monochrome pencil to a surprise exaggerated gonzo Peter Saul-like style, highlighting Rat’s teeth-clenching gum addiction that earned her the nickname Buff Jaw. What ties Taeer M’s show together is a series of interrelated narratives, as if each drawing in a grouping is a comic cell, all of which are delightfully horny, sweet, and berserk. Squirrel and Rat have a morning-after debrief about their overlapping homicidal revenge dreams, including Squirrel recreating the security footage of Brian Thompson’s assassination (Free Luigi!), except with Mr. Peanut standing in for the UnitedHealthcare CEO. Rat and Pigeon go on adventurous flying and mirror-gazing dates, but break up after being unable to reconcile Pigeon’s need for monogamy. World endures existential and gastrointestinal crises. Roach and World have an epic, tear-jerking, everlasting whirlwind romance that is not just physical, as seen in their bathtub caresses in Roach loves a bath (who says roaches are dirty!), but quietly domestic, like playing footsie while obsessively rewatching a cockroach version of Mulholland Drive.
Taeer M, Roach and World watching the same movie over and over again, 2026, Pen, watercolor, color pencil on paper, 5½ x 8¾ in./13.97 x 22.23 cm
Like bug Betty and Rita clinging to each other in Club Silencio in Roach and World watching the same movie over and over again (I get it), the joy of Taeer M’s drawings lie in the details: Rat’s prominent front teeth poking out of her bitten pink lips while in the throes of rodent cunnilingus ecstasy; Cat’s bodega awning emblazoned with “purr!” rather than “cold beer” or “hot coffee”; Roach and World’s non-human centipede border in Untitled; Squirrel’s nut-shaped dream gun and pan-fried nut for breakfast; and the spent gum wrappers, presumably from Rat, that dominate the large work, JAW. Though the Calvin Klein-like ad for “hEWWman: underwear for lesbian bugs,” also reminiscent of the absurd yet iconic “You’re Looking Very Shane Today” ad in The L Word, makes me giddy, my favorite elements may be when the artist plays on the characters’ species-specific qualities or unique plights, like Squirrel’s perfectly squirrely ass-up burying method and Roach’s T-shirt either printed or stomped with a human shoeprint.
Taeer M, Squirrel: “Forgot I hid this here” (Dream), 2026, Acrylic, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 4⅝ x 9½ in./11.76 x 24.13 cm
Rather than just being amusing, this minutia is what makes the world (not World) within Taeer M’s exhibition feel so fully formed. With this all-encompassing queer world-making, roach+world is in conversation with a whole host of other artists: the compulsive drawing practice and fursona of Nayland Blake; R. Crumb’s wacked-out perversity; the berserk big-boobed animals in Irena Jurek’s paintings; Jack Smith’s appropriately outsized hatred of landlords; and the demi-humans in recent experimental books and film, such as Gianluca Cameron’s novel You Know It’s Black and Josh “Sinbad” Collins’s riotously filthy rockabilly DIY film, Wolf Cat Fever. There is certainly a whole dissertation to be written on the way furries are paw-padding into wider culture outside of Tumblr, Anthrocon, and Chipette-loving outsider artists on TikTok, like this guy, whose content I devoured all last night. Yet, above all, Taeer M’s art reminds me most of queercore legend G.B. Jones’s leather-bound dykes on bikes drawings, forging an opportunity for queer women to ogle illustrated gay erotic fantasies alongside the dominating dudes like Tom of Finland. Except with mostly animals. And like G.B. Jones, Taeer M’s drawings have also been used for illustrations on enticing nightlife flyers, like the GUSH collective’s events.
Installation view: Taeer M., roach+world, Company Gallery, New York (Photo: Sebastian Bach)
But why stop there? The most unexpected inclusion in roach+world might be the corner lineup of cardboard cutouts of all the characters, like a blockbuster summer movie promo display or, even better, a poorly funded local museum, such as the cut-out of Tennessee Williams that welcomes visitors to his eponymous museum in Key West. Similar to TW, I wanted to drape my arm over Squirrel, with her heart nut tattoo, or Pigeon, who reenacts a Marilyn Monroe-like vavavoom pose, and take a pic, if only I weren’t by myself in the gallery. More than just photo bait, these cutouts heroicize these figures, like superheroes, which makes me yearn for a whole Marvel universe-like expansion of Taeer M’s world. I want a Death Fly Halloween costume! I want a Disney World-like dark ride of the gang’s sewer coffee klatch as seen in Urgent Meeting! I want Roach and World romance novels! I want a VR game where you hunt nut CEOs with Squirrel! I want a Rat-themed roller coaster! Ok, ok, I’m getting ahead of myself, but at the very least, I want plushies of all of them!