Collaborative photography project with mourners of trans loved ones and survivors of transphobic violence. We are counteracting the camera’s historic relationship to Queer bodies, as a pathologizing and colonizing tool. Chimera Project Toronto envisioned shared homoerotic space between cismen, transmen and mermen, at a time when transmen were bashed by cis gay men and banned from gay bars. Chimera Project Riis Beach was in response to the suicides of four trans people that summer. Chimera Project Istanbul gathered queer and trans loved ones of their beloved community leader, an FTM who died from untreated ovarian cancer. I developed a skill-sharing methodology with the other mourners, in which each participant confirms the boundaries of their participation in advance, both on levels of technique and desire. In both the underwater and the night photography, the silvery quality of light and long exposure creates images that shimmer in simultaneous darkness and brightness, as an analogy to the complexities of a lived trans life. The images are attributed to all who participated in each shoot. The spirit of the Chimera Project is about gathering together, in health, and creating possibility via a horizontal model of intergenerational skill sharing, and play, as Queer sustainability tactics.
*Detailed Artist Statement for ‘T4T’ (bookcover) Trans Studies Quarterly 9:1, Duke, 2022
Exhibition history:
2016 Mentors, CF Hill, Stockholm. Rick Herron, curator.
Publication history:
‘T4T’ (bookcover) Trans Studies Quarterly 9:1, Duke, 2022
‘Mentors’ exhibition catalogue. CF Hill, Stockholm, Sweden, 2016.
‘Chimera Project’ 2BMagazine, Vol 10:7. Montreal, Canada.
Collections: Private collections in Canada, Sweden, Netherlands, USA
