Like many of us, Sam McKinniss first encountered Troye Sivan on Instagram. The Australian wunderkind, then 20, had just released his first studio album, Blue Neighbourhood; Chloe Wise, a friend and fellow painter, posted from a Sivan concert, catching McKinniss’s attention.
In 2018, the artist spotted Sivan again in Joel Edgerton’s conversion-therapy drama, Boy Erased. “That was a difficult yet moving and necessary story to tell,” McKinniss recalls, “and I was impressed that someone in pop music would want to be part of it.” The painter is an architect of celebrity in his own right, having minted Lorde’s most memorable album cover (for Melodrama) and filled galleries and museums across the U.S. and Europe with his brand of pop-cultural pastiche.
For the issue, he interviewed Sivan (not quite in the flesh, on Zoom)—“I was struck by his sincerity,” says McKinniss—then, he got busy painting CULTURED’s limited-edition artist cover in his Connecticut barn.
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More of our favorite stories from the Cult of Personality issue
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Fashion’s New Muse? The Older Woman Who Hasn’t Aged.
Pro Skater-Turned-Photographer Jerry Hsu Takes Us Inside His Breakup in a New Photobook
You’re Welcome to Keep Listening to ‘Rush.’ But Troye Sivan Has Moved On.
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