Practice-based research .3
Hard launching my new relationship, swooning over my supervisors and thinking about STP pack3rs
Where better to think about home than whilst you're travelling(?)
One of my, soon to be, supervisors has invited me to speak on queerness in (my) art this summer. Another, soon to be, supervisor encouraged me to present an excerpt of my research at the Society for Caribbean Studies 48th conference happening this summer in Bristol. My leading supervisor then invited me for a cup of tea to discuss the wonderful work of Rhea Storr, now on show at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and then on to Site Gallery in Sheffield. I am feeling positive about the team I have ready to support me on this research journey and each supervisor brings something uniquely valuable and integral to my focus on migration, home and gender.
It is one thing to think about ideas of home in relation to nationality and gender but it is another to share that thinking in front of so many people. People, that in both spaces might sit on the far end of my own ideas of gender and culture. To work out your thoughts in front of an audience when you haven’t arrived at a perspective yet (and possibly never will) is vulnerable, risky and a core part of practice-based research. When I share my current thoughts on materials as gender affirming care, Jamaican migration as defining new worlds and the intercourse of them both, I know that what I am really trying to say is that identity is not monolithic and the identities I talk about have been in conflict with one another since the British (and Spanish) colonised Jamaica in the 18th century. Both gender transitioning and migration of Jamaicans continue to be defined and impacted by Britain’s systems. Both are victim to the physical and metaphysical borders designed to be violent, complex and restrictive.
[Image taken during my visit to Transcestry: 10 years of the Museum of Transology exhibition. The image is a unfolded cardboard box with the words ‘TRANSPHOBIA IS COLONIAL written on the card in pen]
I don’t want this entry to exceed the reading time of 5 minutes so I will finish this section by saying that I cannot go a day without thinking about home, and I don’t mean the physical; the house, but ideas of home. I want to ask ‘what makes you feel like you are at home?, how do you ‘make yourself at home’? how do you ‘feel like home’? I want to ask these questions of myself and others and as I continue to unfold my practice through workshops, exhibitions, and writing, I wonder:
Are there colours, images, sayings, foods, certain people or a way of doing something, a ritual that makes you feel at home?
If you tell me to '“make myself at home”, what would I do first? would I get a drink? would I take my shoes off? would I put a record on and if so which one?
You see, because home, like gender and race can be considered a construct and so as I construct myself a new home in my own skin, I wonder what home really is, what it really means.
[Image taken during my visit to Transcestry: 10 years of The Museum of Transology exhibition. The image is of 2 breasts/breast tissue removed during top surgery and being preserved in a jar of some clear liquid substance. One of the breasts have a partial tattoo on it]
STUDIO VOLTAIRE … we go together
After 9 months together, I think it’s about time for a hard launch. It’s time I just come out and say that I am in a healthy and loving relationship with Studio Voltaire.
I won’t go into detail of what the Tender Living program is because you can find out more about it on their website, but in short, I am being tasked and supported to explore Black Trans health and support systems in the UK via an artist-research residency. I have been slowly falling in love with Studio Voltaire (the Civic team and the building itself) over the last 9 months, we have even spent a few nights together, and so with lovestruck eyes I really believe I can see a future for us.
Metaphors aside, I am enjoying being in residence and have met some incredible people and organisations throughout the project, including organisations such as Black Trans Hub, Trans Muted and Gendered Intelligence.
On Friday, courtesy of my bae, Studio Voltaire, I visited Trancestry: 10 years of The Museum of Transology at Lethaby Gallery in London curated by E-J Scott. It was an affirming and educational day trip and I left with a digital camera full of images, an empowered sense of identity as I navigate this English landscape of overt and covert colonial and patriarchal violence, and a new found fixation with STP (stand-to-pee) pack3rs. STP pack3rs helped me to fall down a rabbit hole of a myriad of trans masculine gender affirming objects. I might talk more on this in the next entry. For now, I will just sign off by saying: Trans lives matter, Trans people have always existed, and Trans people will continue to exist in spite of the violence against us.
My name is Exodus, many of my loved ones call me Exo for short. Exo has become a personal vow to love and hold myself and others, so with hugs and kisses, I thank you for reading. xoxoxo
