“Visibility” is the buzzword du jour but like any other form of exposure it needs to be backed by viable changes in art institutions and industries, otherwise it runs the risk of being nothing more than a superficial act of tokenism. For trans artists, making work that depicts themselves and the worlds in which they live is an essential part of their activism.
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In the online exhibition “Radical Tenderness: Trans for Trans Portraiture“, Alice Austen House executive director Victoria Munro and guest curator Dr. Eliza Steinbeck bring together the work of artists Johanna Jackie Baier (Germany), Zackary Drucker (US), Texas Isaiah (US), and Del LaGrace Volcano (US/Sweden) who use photography as an essential part of their practices of survival and care. Rather than follow the commercial trope of visibility, which caters to mainstream narratives that positions diversity as “one of each,” therefore reinforcing “otherness,” the artists featured here create a world that is inherently “for us, by us.”
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“Photography for me is a survival strategy,” Del LaGrace Volcano says in the exhibition catalogue. “I am intersex but also trans and non-binary, so my approach is from the inside, not ethnographic or anthropologic. I make work with people I connect with or am hoping to know better. Afterwards, in silence, tenderly working with my memories of the photographic moments we created together, I wonder if they have any idea how much they all mean to me? Connection is the key ingredient and the process is as important, if not more so, than the product.”
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