When Is It About Me?
This piece was inspired by constantly told “a nice femme scarf” would help when the artist felt dysphoric. This also work is also a comment on how the artist is expected to perform femininity and transness, for both cis people and other trans people, and how restrictive those ideas often are and the harm they can cause.
The installation was a number of images displayed of the artist wrapping themselves in nice femme scarves, obscured slightly by actual scarves hung from above.
Notes on Femme
In the context of this artwork, femme has a very specific and personal meaning - existing on the axes of trans and dyke and working class. Here femme is used to describe not only my own relationship with femininity, sometimes a deep rooted spiritual connection and sometimes what feels like it has been hardwired into my brain, but how others position me according to that. This includes how I am expected to present, act, speak, participate, contribute, love, fuck, work, organise and otherwise exist. It dictates not only what I do but what is done to me. I am treated the same as a ‘non-passing’ trans woman and experience the same kinds of transmisogyny as well as experiencing invisibility as a femme dyke (cis women who are femme dykes are often read as straight women and have their queerness/dykeness erased. As trans I am often read more as a man in a dress, thereby erasing my dykeness as well).
Femme is both armour and bandage. It is a reclamation of control of my identity, my life and my body.
The installation was a number of images displayed of the artist wrapping themselves in nice femme scarves, obscured slightly by actual scarves hung from above.
Notes on Femme
In the context of this artwork, femme has a very specific and personal meaning - existing on the axes of trans and dyke and working class. Here femme is used to describe not only my own relationship with femininity, sometimes a deep rooted spiritual connection and sometimes what feels like it has been hardwired into my brain, but how others position me according to that. This includes how I am expected to present, act, speak, participate, contribute, love, fuck, work, organise and otherwise exist. It dictates not only what I do but what is done to me. I am treated the same as a ‘non-passing’ trans woman and experience the same kinds of transmisogyny as well as experiencing invisibility as a femme dyke (cis women who are femme dykes are often read as straight women and have their queerness/dykeness erased. As trans I am often read more as a man in a dress, thereby erasing my dykeness as well).
Femme is both armour and bandage. It is a reclamation of control of my identity, my life and my body.
