symptoms of self-pride

in this viral struggling

A blue wall is overlaid with pink and white strips at its center, alluding to the transgender flag. The words ONE THING YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT are pasted on top of it. On the top-left corner, a person looks out their window. The words MARCH 2020 are attached. On the left side, several pink drops fall onto the found-collage poem. On the bottom-right corner, a person’s face is obscured by the cut-out of a phone screen, from which a plant bearing pink and blue leaves blooms.

out without an audience

Red, purple, pink, and orange shapes form the background. In the upper section, a face with inverted pink triangles for eyes radiates flames next to the words PLEASE YOUR SELF! In the middle to bottom section, a hand directs a fork toward a figure with a laptop propped on their legs. The words BE OUT WITHOUT THE AUDIENCE are attached. The right side is occupied by the found-collage poem.

either is not or

In horizontal stripes from up to down are the colors yellow, white, purple, and black, alluding to the nonbinary flag. The yellow section is lined with cut-outs of sunflowers, and the purple section forms a bouquet wrapper with a cut-out of the Instagram logo. On the bottom-right corner, a figure with a woman’s and man’s face is obscured by another sunflower. The collage-poem is scattered through and across each stripe.

symptoms of self-pride is a series of traditional collages and cut-up found poetry about exploring one’s gender identity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Using images, shapes, words, and colors from magazines available to me at home, I believed this medium would emulate “the queer/trans experience” of taking aspects from one’s cisheteronormative environment and undergoing a process of remixing-and-repurposing to make it one’s own. This project is a result of arts-based research in which I inquired into the ways isolation altered my relationship with traditional gender norms and the way I’ve navigated life from March 2020 to the present—eventually coming to terms with my being nonbinary and transmasculine. In the end, these artworks became not only a reflection of my own journey but a means of connecting with LGBTQ+ people who are going through similar journeys.

in this viral struggling depicts both the joy that transgender people experience as they come into their identities and the fear they feel while imagining or facing the hostile society that lies beyond their living space. It also seeks to remind them that this discovery isn’t futile and can instead be life-giving. out without an audience attempts to encourage people to challenge gender norms for themselves—to pursue what fulfills them even if it doesn’t meet the status quo. The symbols presented serve to evoke the generations of LGBTQ+ rights movements that have passed their torch to us so that we can live more truthfully today. either is not or comments on the divide between the digital and “real-life” personas of queer people while urging them that they need not pick one “self” over the other. Moreover, it draws a comparison to the gender binary and the lightness or freedom of being nonbinary.

The title of this project plays with the dual associations of the word “symptom” which, although typically understood as the manifestation of a disease such as SARS-CoV-2 or a malaise rooted in our country’s ailing democracy, could point towards something else—something healing—entirely. In this case, my experience of self-acceptance and gender euphoria drove me to choose the word “pride,” alluding to the LGBTQ+ community that continues to grow in our “techno-limbo” age both despite and due to distancing from social norms. It also captures the clarified sense of happiness I feel toward myself as the object and subject of my body which, in itself, is quarantine and shelter all at once. My hope for this series is that it will allow viewers to recognize how solidarity can persist in relative solitude, as well as dare them to transform spaces perceived as getaways into ones of homecoming.