“We Can Speak For Ourselves Thanks”: The Magical Mundanity of Transgender Subjectivity (A Virtual Exhibition)
This is a paper I wrote for my MA in art history a few months ago. The assignment was to create a virtual exhibition of five images answering a question of our own devising, and to write an essay explaining our choices and a catalogue entry for one of the images. The formatting on Medium doesn’t allow footnotes for the references, but there is a bibliography at the end and if you want to read it with all references intact let me know and I’ll send you a link. I really enjoyed writing it and I hope to explore more around this issue in the future!
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The images I chose for this exhibition present a broad range of responses to the question set. They explore issues of self-determination and self-actualisation, challenging objectifying ciscentric stereotypes and using the transgender body to assert agency. They give a frank portrayal of the reality of the transgender experience as both magical and mundane. Taken together, the images present what Halberstam terms a “transgender gaze”, showing us the transgender subject and the world they inhabit through their own eyes. They often address a cisgender audience but do so without allowances or accommodation — rather than being offered easy clichés which confirm cultural narratives, they are forced to encounter the transgender subject on their own terms.
One may question why it matters what the identity of an artist is in this era of the Death of the Author, but as Braidotti said, “in order to announce the death of the subject one must first have gained the right to speak as one”. The oldest piece in this exhibition is from 2013, which speaks to how transgender artists making work about being transgender have been marginalised within the art world. Historically transgender people have rarely been granted space to represent their own experiences, and even now there is greater awareness and understanding of transgender issues images created by cisgender people dominate the public understanding of the transgender subject. These images often fall into cliché and stereotypes, othering the transgender subject and framing them as something to be feared, laughed at, sexually objectified or pitied. Even as portrayals are becoming more sympathetic the transgender subject is frequently defined by dysphoria and pain, and attempts to replicate their cisgender counterpart which will always fail. In a culture where appearance is assumed to define identity, the Image becomes crucial for the transgender subject. Cisgender (and transnormative) culture places value on transgender people who “pass” (eg. a transgender woman who is percieved as a cisgender woman), and those who are able to do so are considered “successful” in their transition. The prevalence of the “before and after” image set to illustrate articles about transgender people reinforces the importance of the transgender subject’s appearance as “proving” the validity of their gender. Because of this the image is often used to reassure the viewer of the subject’s assimilation into cisnormative ideals, or to draw attention to the ways they fail in this.
By looking at images of the transgender subject created by transgender people themselves, we can get an insight into the effect of the ciscentric gaze and what happens when these bodies speak back. The images in this exhibition respond by rejecting the need to conform to cisgender body standards and present those attributes which don’t fit into it as shameful or Other. All the images I’ve chosen for this exhibition apart from Astrotwich’s are self portraits, and demonstrate how images are used by transgender people to affirm their own identity and subjectivity on their own terms. As Prosser says; “[…] the visual media are highly valued, for they promise (like transition itself) to make visible that which begins as imperceptible”. He accounts how it may be used to create the “[…] concretisation of an imperceptible self”. Halberstam describes how transgender people can use self-portraits as “[…] artistic acts of radical narcissism [to] ‘de-objectify’ the body”. The growth of social media has allowed transgender individuals to create and disseminate their own image, and many artists who are transgender use their own bodies to create their own (literal and figurative) image of transgender subjectivity. Astrotwitch’s portrait of trangender writer Parker Molloy titled We Can Speak For Ourselves, Thanks (2015) directly addresses the desire to create one’s own subjectivity, both with text and the placement of the image in public space via unauthorised street art. Parker’s expression is unimpressed, and she appears unwilling to engage with the viewer or offer comfort. The tagging which surrounds the pasted painting reinforces the message of the urge to speak for oneself. It’s a sarcastic demand for transgender people to be the creators of their own images, both literal and in the public imagination. Juliana Huxtable’s Afrofuturist-inspired Untitled (Lil’ Marvel) is a powerful celebration of this. Afrofuturism uses imagery from science fiction to imagine a future without racial oppression, and here Huxtable does this as an African-American transgender woman, using the Image to present herself as a superhero inspired figure, gesturing in creation or transformation. The subtitle references Marvel Comics, but also presents herself as a Marvel of nature. This isn’t a figure asking for acceptance or sympathy, or willing to change themselves to fit the standards of the dominant culture, but simply being in all her innate strength and power. I chose this as the opening image for the exhibition, because I feel it stands as a powerful image of transgender empowerment and self-determination far beyond cliché.
Keegan writes of the exposure scene as one such cliché of transgender representation in cinema, where the transgender body is violently or coercively revealed to other characters and so to the audience, “producing either disgust or crass laughter […] the scenes are often constructed in order to generate sympathy”, but it still results in “the violent exposure and ridicule of the trans body”. The works I’ve chosen by Tyza Stewart and Edward Schwartz point to this, literally in Stewart’s Point Being (2015). Stewart points downwards into the empty space between their hands, feet and head to what they know the mostly cisgender audience wants to see, but instead of fixed answers there is only an empty space of possibility, uncertainty and flux. The gaze is assertive, challenging, as the artist refuses to render the part of themselves that is most sensationalised. We see a very different response to the exposure scene in Jump! (2016) by Edward Schwartz. Schwartz gives us an exposure scene entirely without sensation, as we witness a seemingly mundane scene of three men jumping naked into a pool at night. It’s only on closer inspection that we see one of these figures is transgender, yet there is nothing about the image, either the behaviour of the figures captured or the framing of the image itself, which draws attention to this. Instead each figure appears to be fully in their own experience as they take their individual leaps of faith together. Jump! presents the nudity of transgender people with the same mundanity that is experienced by transgender people themselves, or at least how they may desire to experience it.
Cassils’ Becoming An Image (2013, henceforth BAI) is a performance which examines the role of the Image in creating the transgender subject, and as a witness to the violence experienced by transgender people. In the performance, Cassils, who is a bodybuilder and boxer as well as an artist, attacks a 1500lb block of clay in a darkened room, lit only by the occasional light of a camera flash. The sudden brightness of the flash distorts the image and “[…] sears the image of the ‘fight’ into the retina, literally creating a live image in each person present”. The first performance of BAI was commissioned for the event Transactivation: Revealing Queer Histories in the Archive, which discussed the histories of transgender and queer people that are often missing from LGBTQ archives, and was held in an empty archival room. The assault on the clay speaks of the violence enacted towards transgender people, but also of the shaping and tranformation of the body by the transgender individual. BAI looks at what is hidden and revealed, and how the image can literally shed light on violence and transformations. The images, referred to as “performance stills”. created from the performances act as traces and as an archive themselves. They are much clearer than what was experienced by those in the room, and presents much more sanitised visual than the experience of witnessing the performance. They speak of how the image remains removed from the subject, even as it brings light to it. I chose to use a still that features the audience, as this draws attention to the voyeuristic nature of the image and how the camera acts as witness to the events unfolding.
I feel I was successful in achieving my goals with this exhibition, and that the images present a diverse and strong depiction of the transgender subject. Together I feel they give a powerful insight into the work of contemporary transgender artists. It was a struggle initially as the marginalised nature of transgender people means that I had to look hard to find exhibiting artists producing work that specifically answered my question, and when I did it wasn’t always easy to find information about them. However I found the search very rewarding, and ended up with a good selection of work to choose from. I do wish I had managed to include more work by artists of colour or disabled artists, as I feel these intersections are important to shed light on. I was pleased that I managed to include a good balance of work by assigned male and assigned female artists, as there is often an imbalance in this area.
Part 2: Catalogue Entry — Becoming an Image — Performance Still (2013) by Cassils
Becoming an Image (henceforth referred to as BAI) is a performance in which Cassils launches a physical assault on a 1500lb lump of clay in an empty archival room, using their training as a boxer to beat the clay, aggressively moulding the form. It takes place in a pitch black room, with the only light source being the flash mounted on a photographer’s camera. This makes the documentation process one of literal illumination, as images are created both in the eyes of the viewers of the performance from the severity of the flash and in the camera itself. Here we see one of the stills produced by the performance (1). Through the performance Cassils explores the power of the Image and the Archive to make the experiences of the marginalised transgender subject visible. The performance was initially commissioned by ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives of Los Angeles, in conjunction with the exhibition Cruising the archives. Since then it has been performed many times around the world.
In his work Cassils manipulates his own physique through training and bodybuilding. His piece Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture (2011) saw him shape his body into a muscular physique over sixty days, a work that referenced Elanor Antin’s performance Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972), in which Antin followed a strict diet to lose nine pounds over thirty days. However Cassils’ transformations speak of self embodiment and creation rather than conformation. Cassils presents an alternative narrative to the usual medical transition with hormone replacement and surgery by enacting physical transformation solely through physical training. BAI draws a relationship between Cassils’ own transformation and that of the clay he pounds during the performance, with the clay acting as a powerful metaphor for the transitioning body with its “[…] malleability, fluidity, and the ability to shape-shift while remaining the same substance.” Through the performance the inanimate clay becomes alive, both an adversary and a substitute body appearing to merge with that of the artist, displaying the history of their actions upon it, and expressing the complex relationship transgender people often have with their own physicality.
The forming of relationships with inanimate objects which represent and enable transition and the place of transgender people in the Archive is explored in curator EJ Scott’s project The Museum of Transology, which has been housed at the London College of Fashion (2017) and Brighton Museum (2018–2019). Scott created the museum in response to the lack of archival material around transgender people and their lives and histories, displaying objects donated by transgender people which were significant to their transition. These projects explore how relationships with inanimate objects can be used to highlight the exclusion of transgender experiences from archives and museums, and so from public awareness.
The images created from BAI stand as a document of the transition in progress, presenting the transgender bodies of both the artist and clay in flux. They present an archive that is much clearer and more sanitised than that which is experienced by the audience present, highlighting the disparity between the experience and the record and the ability of the Image to create its own reality.
Bibliography
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