THE TEXT IS TRANS–
COCONUT STUDIOS//2024In 2024, I was invited to participate in a six-week trans support group program, meeting with trans and non-binary folks to discuss shared experiences, concerns, and forms of community engagement, as well as to hear from invited speakers working in our community. I was invited to contribute a session in the form of a performance lecture, which included the production and distribution to the group of a series of small framed artworks. Each work engaged a term beginning with ‘trans’, also used as a chapter markers within the presentation. Terms we laser cut into the framing of the works alongside definitions that were technically incorrect, however spoke to a certain condition of the term itself.
I place this series here as a reflection on the ambivalence of the surface. The terms are held in a kind of forced suspension: their conventional meanings remain legible, however, they are also displaced by alternative definitions. Meaning is held in tension. This suspension is echoed in the collaged materials, whose surfaces are themselves already ambiguous and multiple. Word and image operate together where meaning is continuously negotiated.