An imaginary garden with real toads in them
Photograhy
Print on adhesive vinyl
and ultra smooth Hahnemühle, dimension variable + laser paper for writing elements
2020-2024*
An imaginary garden with real toads in them is a photography project that re-envisions transness and dysphoria through the lens of interspecies relationships. The series is influenced by the poetics of late modernist
poet Marianne Moore, whose work represents non-human bodies without attempting to wholly capture or dominate them. An imaginary garden similarly conjures transspecies textures, qualities and essences without exploiting animal labour or seeking to replicate scientific ‘accuracy’.
Throughout the series, there is a leitmotif of torso imagery. The human torso is a mythologised, politicised and gendered part of the body; it is a site of struggle concerning sexualisation, breastfeeding, ideals of the ‘right’ kind of torso to fit a binary gendered system, and representation of post-op bodies.
As this project explores, the historical development of body signal sensors for lie detection and surveillance is also rooted in this region of the body. Mixing images of my torso with non-human elements allows me to reclaim dysphoria from pathology, instead exploring possibilities of ‘becoming with’ that challenge queerphobic and humanist notions of the default, or ‘correct’, body.
Adopting a speculative approach, the use of of mix of photography and 3D imagery, virtual fur, 3D collage and other imagined animalistic shapes, An imaginary garden creates a sensual, dreamlike aesthetic of undying queerness and future potential existence. This project transports Moore’s ethics into a contemporary posthuman visual offering, reclaiming the transbody from continuing legacies of control, pathologization and surveillance. It invites viewers of any gender into a space of fantastical embodiment.
Partisan x
Dual-channel video
Dual-channel video
2023-2024
Evaniida +To the alien worm lover I fantasize about.
Book, prints & design objects
2020-2023*
Evaniida is a series of sensual objects including wax play candles,
pouring wax cups and non-human strap-on belts. The project is
collected in a book of photographs called To the alien worm lover
I fantasize about. which contains a text Lipoma- Sting pregnancy
featuring an alien character from Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild.
Bloodchild is one of the first well-known texts to contain an
AMAB and transpecies pregnancy story.
The project was first developed as a self-grounding tool in
response to the Covid pandemic, which for many people resulted
in a lack of bodily intimacy, corresponding with increased time
interacting digitally/virtually.
The project was par of the show “FOR ADULTS
ONLY”, curated by Club Kin.X at Transmission
Gallery, Glasgow, 2023
A shop is available on bigcartel where you can
objects & book :
adoreadore.bigcartel.com
Photographs on C-Print, 90x72cm each
Part of the show “FOR ADULTS ONLY”, curated by Club Kin.X at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow
2023
To the alien worm lover I fantasize about.
pages 28
size A4
available available in shop
Behind the scene video of Hyptia cup fabrication
Space Sporification
Durational performance
2021-2022
Being a facilitator
Persons in the space, touching, holding Herma
Outerspaces voices
A dancing spaceship
A foam machine spreading the spores
-
3 sensors “Herma” shared in the crowd, measuring a collective rhythm
-list of interview participants):
Aph
Cheyenne Bouchet
MV Brown
Eline Bry
Eden Dodd
Hannah Edward
Axel Gutapfel
Brontë Jones
Harvey Lancaster-Rous
Aga Mlynczak
Francisco Ortega
Alba Sofia
Adam Stearn
Clarinda Tse
Alex Turner
Jack Wannsborough
Transcription:
Miranda Stuart
Programming :
Selina Leung (aileenacs)
Aph
Cheyenne Bouchet
MV Brown
Eline Bry
Eden Dodd
Hannah Edward
Axel Gutapfel
Brontë Jones
Harvey Lancaster-Rous
Aga Mlynczak
Francisco Ortega
Alba Sofia
Adam Stearn
Clarinda Tse
Alex Turner
Jack Wannsborough
Transcription:
Miranda Stuart
Programming :
Selina Leung (aileenacs)
Kunstmuseum St-Gallen, Switzerland
Curated by Martina Morger and Laura Van Der Tas
2021
-
Photography of the performance by mani froh and Fabienne Watzke
Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow
Part of Double Thrills Curated by Buzzcut
2022
-
Excrept of some interviews
Transitional object
Archival pigment print on self-adhesive Hahnemühle and archival pigment print on
Hahnemühle, framed, 425 x 225 cm
Working with young children, Donald Winnicott (1951), introduced the concepts of transitional objects and transitional experience in reference to a particular developmental sequence, an intermediate developmental phase between the psychic and external reality.
In the Transitional object series I explore the intimacy of the healing process from dissociative amnesia disorder - a condition I have experienced from my teenage years to my mid-late 20s: the time when I began to create the images of this series.
Dissociative amnesia is characterised by memory challenges and lapses, which most likely developed to protect an individual from the trauma they experienced. A memory gap may be specific to a past traumatic event or a broader length of time. The gap may be narrowly focused on certain details of an event or time frame, or it may be broad, and the individual loses memory of their own life history and the understanding of what makes up their identity.
The photographs were created before, during and after my awareness of having this condition. The images can be thought of as a documentation of my state of mind whilst I made my way through. Often made in my own room – like a child playing in theirs, with a sense of security - aided by an accompanying process of therapy sessions, meditation and image building and lucid dreams, the protective wall that was preventing the access of some forgotten memory slowly broke down.
The series takes the form of a tale, narrated via a constellation of events, characters and landscapes: a dried male sea-horse (the male bears a brood pouch in which a female lays eggs, until they hatch) is a the feeling of my own femininity/trans-identity ‘drying up’ in the environment I grew up in; a floating axolotl (which reaches adulthood without undergoing metamorphosis) represents the idea of the queer core I need to protect myself; the hornet nest is female structure and society; the spiral in the hair of a man is the idea of a repetitive cycle.
Kathryn Crabb, a contemporary psychotherapist, confirms the inherent link between trauma-healing and tales: “The importance of the Old Stories unfurls far beyond entertainment or historical interest. Their therapeutic value is less in their overt content than in their symbolic depths: the Old Stories are archetypal. That is, they bring to life invisible blueprints for diverse parts of the human psyche, intangible reflections of the basic impulses that exist within each of us.”
Transitional object was nominated at the Swiss Design Awards 2015 : link
Exbhition at the Swiss Design Awards, Basel, 2015
