TRANSPARENCY
These works are based on an Olan Mills photo of me, aged 10, forced to wear pink and keep my hair long. Even then, without language, politics, or clarity, I knew I was trans.
Transformation is a fragile process wherein you are not yet what you are becoming, but also not what you were. My gender occupies a liminal space where permanence is rejected and practice is embraced. My body: a shell of the former, a vessel for the current, a cocoon for the future. My job: sifting through the layers.
Processing this image through cycles of digital filters formally allows me to replicate the process of deconstructing and reconstructing oneself over time. This process queers the information hierarchy and delights my need for a reactive, poetic flow to work out the versions of self I house within my flesh.
The open book structure hanging is composed of my kid portrait in its original form and digitally reworked versions to make me look more masculine. Through these iterations of self converging, the framed collage offers a symbol of my nonbinary gender.
Transparency. Ink, frosted mylar, masking tape. 4’ x 4’ digital art collage, 17” x 11” book structure
100 Years Ago. Restaged Portrait. 2024.
Transparency Processing. Digital Art. 2023.
Transparency Install details. 2023.