YOUNG PUP

beginnings of a tran’s artist manifesto

The Power In Art

Our lives can have hugely significant political ramifications if we choose to make ourselves vulnerable. By rendering into focus that which is always made invisible about ourselves. By living without secrets, the opportunity for better world-making becomes possible. My artwork can include people into a unique experience that we are often forced to go through in silence. We are given the strictest measures of gender to qualify and then subjected to as many normalizing practices as possible. Our voices are not heard, our voices are not seen, only those who speak for us and for their own purposes are heard.

When we do speak to each other and when do speak for ourselves, we are changing the rules of the game. We live in a world that is hostile to us; that performing cissexuality when we are not, is a means of survival. The concept of cissexuality is so overwhelmingly performed everyday in our culture, it is the only model in which we have to understand gender. To not be cis, is to not be understood or accepted. The meanings of our own souls cannot be visible. Our words means nothing, it is only the body which can be interpreted. Transfolks are not given a lot of ooptions.

There is no socially acceptable way to be trans.* Trans folks don’t get to keep their pasts without hurt. We don’t get to tell our stories without telling too much, without opening the depth of our experiences to a point that leaves our hearts vulnerable.

That is why trans people telling stories and creating art is such a radical act. What we put out there is hugely personal, and everyone of us has to consider the consequences of putting ourselves out there. It seems the only time mainstream media tells our stories, is when we are being violently murdered, laughed at, or examined as a medical marvels.

When we tell our own stories, the possibilities of living outside the confines of cissexuality start to become possible. That is what is so inspiring about all of the trans people online; we talk to each other, document what we go through, and provide support for others. It’s hard work, but the internet and art making practices that trans people are using is starting to tell a different story of what it is to be trans. Every picture, blog post, and vlog, is opening up possibilities and creating a better world for us.

*Queer activists may cry at all the injustices made by the homonormative movement (of which there are many), but at least more queer kids can find acceptance in their families and homes if they perform normative LGB identities. Trans kids often often can’t find this level of acceptance because performing normative trans identity is the same as performing cissexuality.

One of my favorite parts of this is the discussion of vulnerability, its something that I end up talking about a lot around school. This definitely came with a privilege check though in the fact that my discussions have always surrounded the idea of myself as a queer cis artists choosing to reveal aspects of my life, self, partners, and my relation to gender because they are the most powerful tools I have to communicate to people and try to effect change. I have felt that it is my responsibility to offer up my own vulnerability as a personal/political act, but haven’t thought how I might feel differently about this in my art making were that the only option on a day to day basis, the only way of telling my story.

“There is no socially acceptable way to be trans.* Trans folks don’t get to keep their pasts without hurt. We don’t get to tell our stories without telling too much, without opening the depth of our experiences to a point that leaves our hearts vulnerable.”

Im glad I got to read this.

5 months ago 29 notes

YOUNG PUP

19. Boston. Printmaking Student.

beginnings of a tran’s artist manifesto