Frankenstein Jones

Tuesday 23 November 2021

I EXIST

“It is our right to be seen and heard. We belong, we exist.”

Trans people exist, have always existed, but how often have you seen a Trans subject represented in an art museum? How often have you seen the personal artefacts of a Trans person in a historical museum? Trans people are so often seen as a problem to be debated and pondered, or they are seen as targets for violence and exclusion. Bigots are trying to minimize the presence of Trans people because in that way it will minimize the visibility of their bigotry and violence.

This is why the call from Trans people and their allies is so simplistic.

“I EXIST”

An art exhibition at The Coastguard Studios in Southsea didn’t just say this loudly, proudly and bravely as you would hope. Samo’s art and the testimonials of the portrait subjects not only showed the humanity of struggling to fit in the world, but also the grace one finds when a place in the world is found or created.

The art itself is delicate and meticulous. There is still the scrawled edge of Samo’s street art meets punk rock style, however, unlike paintings and illustrations I have seen previously, the style still leans into expressionism but the drawings are more informed by the subject, rather than the emotion of the artist. The abundant emotional content has not been lost, it has been shared between artist and subject. Instead of crossing lines that have built up the drawing, the lines are additional expression to the drawing. This may be because the subjects have developed into themselves already. This is metaphorical, not just an evolution of techniques. Many of the people who are the subject of the portraits have undergone surgery in order to exist as themselves. This is a difficult, slow, meticulous and expensive process. The change in line work pays its due to this. Reigning in a technique so common and a part of one’s signature style, this shows, I think, how important the story being told, and the subjects who are represented are. The art is not just about how well people are represented in portrait, the portraiture is of the highest quality, but that it is about the representation of Trans people in art.

Art has gone through many eras of violent erasure. Historical events and institutions such as the Third Reich, Chinese Cultural Revolution, The CCCP, The British Empire and the Colonial Expansion of Christendom and Islam have all brought with them casualties of culture and art. We now know that cultures who have suffered erasure, repression and revision would have been places where Trans people would have seen themselves represented in art and culture.

Classical era Greece has always had a strong presence and is considered to be the root of European art and culture, but where are the representations of Gods and Heroes who transitioned, metamorphosed or do not fit the binary definitions of gender?

Vikings are a popular and fashionable subject for portraiture and figurative art. Where are the representations of Trans Scandinavian raiders? They lived in a world with strongly defined gender roles, but they were lines that people crossed to live their true lives.

We will not know how much of this art once existed and has been erased. We will never know how many of our ancestors were violently erased people. The story of the oppressed is not the story that is preserved. This never means that it is not the story worth telling.

The Dark Ages were so awful that it takes some time to exhaust the list of why those days and years were known as the Dark Ages. One of the reasons for this name is that the light of polytheism, philosophy, reason and sexuality of classical era Greece and North Africa was snuffed out. The Christianization led many scientific instruments, poetry, plays, prose, statues, paintings and ultimately people to be put to the pyre. Once Christendom had found the frontiers of colonization, the concepts of gender and sexuality found at these frontiers were violently erased and repressed.

Religion was an unexpected feature of Samo’s art. I had only seen a few portraits which quoted religious icons in his work before. The subjects gaze to the distance in a state of grace as in iconography of saints. Other portraits stare right at you. Fierce, brave and open to you. The religious iconography is subtle, but present throughout the portraits. Some of the subjects have beautiful halos, others have additional limbs. The iconography does not come from a singular religious source.

The reasons Samo had for including this became clear when I began to read the testimonials. People talked about their transition as not only the reconciliation between body and spirit achieved through therapies and treatment, but also of the immense experience of becoming who you truly are later in life, or for who you are to not be accepted until later in life. It is not a coincidence that so many testimonials of people who found religion later in life, and were saved by it would use similar terminology. Arrivals, Rebirths and a state of grace discovered through hard and personal work. An Exodus from a repressive state. Freedom to be oneself and to find those who will accept us. The road to Damascus could just as easily be the road to who we are. One of the testimonials in particular revealed a visionary experience. While recovering and healing from severe injury, dreams were where the subject existed. Their vision was of who they needed to become. By the time the portrait was completed, it was who they were.

The reason for these tangential lessons in history and religion is simple. There is a lot of erasure of Trans people. Not just erasure of the people but of the representation of those people. Samo has spent two years completing these portraits, collecting these testimonials and constructing his book. This impressive feat has given voice and representation to many people, but as the powerful have been cruel to these people through history, there is still a lot of ground to gain. There is a lot of space that these people deserve to reclaim as their own. The spaces upon plinths, in frames and walls. They deserve to be the characters of stories, they have their own stories to tell and their own heroes and gods to imagine. Looking at the output of Trans culture globally, we could be on the precipice of a renaissance, a beautiful reclamation. Art is the vessel for emotions, beauty and harmony. Tools for life that Trans people have tempered as a matter of survival.

For art, books and more from Samo please visit https://mistersamo.bigcartel.com/

Frankenstein Jones

Tuesday 23 November 2021

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