I am a nonbinary painter, printmaker, tailor and archaeology researcher, and I have been publishing my research alongside visual exhibitions for the past 6 years. I find inspiration in my archaeology and folklore research, and in personal mythologies that articulate different facets of grief, longing, and personhood. My work explores human and nonhuman animal hybrids, analyzing what it means when their bodies and ours are entangled. I utilize symbolism from both fields of my work to produce images grounded in both the emotional and the scientific. The collection of work exhibited was a mix of illustrated myths, dreams, and poems. I included a variety of pieces and mediums from the past several years, and made 4 pieces specifically for the exhibition (the Sweet Pea triptych and the tapestry).

My illustrated hybrids are in various states of transformation or decay: human faces peer out of birds, thickets of briar, sprout from the shoulders of cattle or insects, curled and twisted, appear inside the viscera of slaughtered prey. My work examines the unlovable, lurid, obscene or frightening so that I can articulate what it is to be perceived as subhuman for the ability and willingness to transform your own body. Now, more than ever, my work wrestles with themes of protection, vitality, and collective terror: I kneel and stitch tapestries of protective androgynous knights praying that we will survive. The work I exhibited at my BFA exhibition was simultaneously meant to soothe those of us who are afraid, and prompt silent onlookers to action. I made some of my most overtly trans art ever for this exhibition, because there are so many around us who would see us extinguished.

I want to paint a way out, something that indulges in myth and escapism without completely divorcing itself from contemporary issues. I find hybrid, mismatched bodies and pensive searching faces to reflect my own experiences looking in the mirror. I venerate that which others us. I paint us wings to fly with, paws to dance with, scorpion tails and claws and fangs to protect each other with. I paint rolls of fat and gristly sinew, stretched skin and cleft palates. I want to find joy in our bodies, to uplift our shapeshifting and transforming, to glorify what others see as monstrous. We are kin, we are connected, and there is beauty in this flesh.

I received quite a bit of positive feedback from other trans and nonbinary students in my gallery notebook, who were particularly drawn to the ambiguously gendered tapestry Heralds and the trembling body of Sweet Pea, a trans child fearing prosecution. I had customers who bought prints of Sweet Pea several months ago stop by to see the piece in person – I gave and received a lot of hugs standing in front of Sweet Pea, felt the desperation and hope sing between the three of us. We felt vital and alive, we felt seen and understood. That is why I do this work. That is why it's so important. When the Heralds are hung at our next trans artist event, we will lie in their shadow and dream of a better future, where we and our future kin are deathless and beautiful.