Location: Mission Gallery, Swansea

This exhibition is me, me then and now. It’s a mess of noise and memory, hope and fear; it’s a paene to the long lost and a statement of intent; it’s an exploration of secrecy and a lived life; it’s a search for a safe place within the hard wild reality of being trans.

The following is a text edit from Trans Panic magazine, produced as part of the exhibition at Mission Gallery, Swansea in 2021.


I'm caught between different states, officially: born and created in one, with time, experience, life, loves, people, messages, communications, paperwork to match (in the eyes of others); and living in another, one that I have been dreaming of, manufacturing and living for as many years as I can remember, to (re)make myself anew. I now have yet more proofs of who I am and will be; proofs on paper and trails online, proofs in stone, written, drawn, recorded; official statements in full. I have the beginnings of another whole lived life.

This is another new year. I'm about 11 in new years; I am coming to that time when in my earlier life I like to think I made myself; me, my heart, my fears, my wants and desires, my places and loves, my confusions. It was the '80s; I was sneaking Smash Hits and Melody Maker under the covers, figuring the closest I'd get to being a woman was Martin L Gore, ffs.

The work for this exhibition was made during 2020/21, while based at g39, Cardiff on a Freelands Foundation fellowship, and supported by a grant from Arts Council Wales.