Trans & Gender Expansive 2024 Inaugural Art Showcase

A. Vásquez (He/They/El)

Niñe/Niño/Niñx

Cyanotype

not for sale

A. Vásquez (they/them/he/el) is from the Southside of Chicago; now majoring in art education at the College of Fine Arts. Formerly making comics and digital illustrations– currently, they are trying to find their way back home. Vásquez makes work about grocery stores, memory, labor, displacement, and citizenship. They spend their time wondering where they can find serrano chiles– but more urgently– Vásquez is seeking accountability from institutions of education and their polished DEI statements.

Ajani Hickling (They/He)

Hibiscus in Bloom

Photography

I am Ajani Hickling. They/he. 19. First-year student and Jamaican photographer. Photography has been my chosen medium for self-expression for the greater part of the last decade. I aim to represent, through my photos, overlooked beauty—whether it be the beauty of our environment, our people, or ourselves. In all that I capture, I seek to engender awe and share the joy of aesthetic appreciation. In some of what I capture, I aim to share ideas, reveal stories, and change perspectives.

Hibiscus in Bloom for sale. $220. Contact Ajani at ajanih@bu.edu or instagram: @renzu_photos

Alina Balseiro (They/Them)

Bribing the Sun

Photography

Alina Balseiro is a non-binary Latinx Queer artist who uses photography and sculpture to empower their collaborators in the LGBTQIA+ community. As they explore the social codes and cues within this group, they depict the common experiences of Queer individuals. Alina interweaves concepts of vulnerability, identity affirmation, balance, and care within relationships, and found communities in their work. Alina’s delicacy when collaborating with friends and strangers shows their ability to create spaces that welcome authenticity of LGBTQIA+ experiences.

As a young Queer person, they incorporate self portraiture into their series which amplifies their initial motivation to focus on specific concepts. Often maneuvering between varying perspectives of viewers, Alina balances the shifting weight of representation, education, and normalization. Their photographs depict the ways that the LGBTQIA+ community wants to be seen leave a multidimensional impression on those that access their work. Alina is committed to generating ethical making processes and maintaining the comfort of their collaborators.

Bribing the Sun is for sale ($800) contact Alina at alina.balseiro@gmail.com

Drew Shechtman (They/He)

Corporis Fabrica

Photograph

Drew is a multidisciplinary artist whose work centers around the human form, focusing on themes of disgust, abjection, and the grotesque. Their work honors the perverse and distorted, bridging the gap between attraction and repulsion, in order to investigate the body as an estranged entity. Drew’s practice is also highly informed by his queer and trans identity, reflecting his personal and complex relationship to the corporeal existence.

Corporis Fabrica is for sale ($50 or best offer) contact Drew at bluedrew128@gmail.com

Ga Tsung 嘉聰 (She/They)

狐狸精神 (Spirit of the Fox)

Poem

not for sale

My birth name is my Chinese name. As many immigrant children, I avoided my home language in public spaces and eventually took on an English name. Twenty years later, when I began to identify as agender, the first gender neutral name that came to mind was my Chinese name. Taking on my Chinese name again, my appreciation and curiosity of the Chinese language suddenly opened up. While teaching myself to read and write Chinese, I began writing poetry that reflected my exploration of developing my cultural, gender, and political identities. I have been writing poetry for about 10 years. The meaningfulness and artful dynamics in spoken and written languages have driven me to eagerly want to explore their versatility.

Guadalupe Campos (They/Them)

Let’s Age Like Trees

hair, thread, wood, nails

not for sale

Guadalupe Campos is a Mexican-American queer multidisciplinary visual artist based in Boston. Campos predominantly works with hair as sculpture, drawing and video. They approach their practice like preparing the dead. It is a solitary and sacred preparation for the parts of ourselves that are long gone. Experiences that are passed on but continue to live in the time of yesterday and before. Through this practice they seek to represent the queer and trans experience outside of the act of defining and identifying and instead through the communities relationships to one another.

Jimmy Yu (He/They)

Self Portraits

Mixed media and collage

not for sale

I am an artist who is interested in identities: both the identities that emerge from performativity and the identities imposed upon me since birth. Art is both a way for me to process and appreciate myself and a way to perform, experiment, and expand my identity. My main medium of expression is drawing. Drawing myself is analogous with the curation of my own body. Through the depiction of bodies and characters through drawings, I am creating a fantastical space that transcends my physical and biological reality. Drawing strength from art, I confront my body with fashion and performance to feel proud, rebellious, and beautiful. To using the term trans to describe others and myself is to articulate my opposition to heteronormativity in the contemporary context. It is a declaration of defiance, as well as a state of transition and liminality. I believe that we can’t be trans forever. One day, we will simply be humans in a welcoming world without genders.

 Matteo Montero-Murillo (He/Him)

Trans Fags!

Digital Art

$20

Matteo Montero-Murillo (he/him) is a 22 year old gay trans and Mexican anarchist artist. He enjoys creating art that celebrates trans expressions, resistance, and liberation. He is also a grad student pursuing his MSW at BU’s School of Social Work. Matteo has been openly trans since 2017 and loves exploring queerness through art, whether through comics about his personal experiences or with guides for trans people on how to navigate transitioning. He is a freelance artist on the side and has worked with Alice Oseman and the queercore punk band Dog Park Dissidents.

Ming Li Wu (He/They)

pajarito

Poetry

not for sale

Ming Li (or Ari) Wu is a queer Chinese-Puerto Rican poet, teacher, and ethnic studies scholar from Huntsville, Alabama, by way of Reno, Nevada. Both their academic work and their poetry deal with themes such as queer and trans precarity, belonging, and futurity, especially in Latinx contexts. He currently resides in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

N. G. Eagle (He/Him/His)

Ecce “Homo” / Behold “the Man”

Digital Art

Call it destiny or the divine, I feel blessed to be allowed to live a transgender life. A rare few men throughout the course of human history have known girlhood, or experienced what it is to be a sister and a daughter. For me, each injection of testosterone is an act of radical prayer. I have become whole, this transformed man who cradles a young girl in his heart. More than any mass I’ve ever attended, the creation of myself feels like a communion with the heavens. No matter how my identity is politicized or taken out of context for the gain of others, I will only ever view being a trans man as an edict from above.

Ecce “Homo” / Behold “the Man” is for sale ($30 or best offer). Contact N. G. Eagle at nickge@bu.edu

P. Christopher Capp (He/They)

Own Creation  |  Bound

Digital Art  |  Mixed Media Painting

I am a queer transmasculine artist who loves to create bold, vibrant illustrations using paintings, drawings, or comics that evoke emotional responses from the viewers. For me, art is a way of communicating. Art serves as a dialogue between the artist and the audience, between artists, and between the artwork and the world around it. Through my art, I aim to make sense of my life experiences and emotions by creating narrative-driven works that tell a story to the viewers. Storytelling is a prominent component of my art, and that focus has shifted my view of my artistic identity as a whole. My artistic identity is not limited to the materials used but instead by the impact of my creations and their stories. Artists are not just painters or sculptures; artists are storytellers, innovators, and educators. The stories artists share shape how we view ourselves and our surrounding world. I hope to create work that grabs my audiences’ attention and reels them into the story that stands before them. As an artist, I desire to create stories where people can feel seen or connected. Ultimately, I wish to use my identity as an artist to grow empathy in the community around me. I hope to evoke empathy from the little glimpses of experiences from my work. After all, Art is a way of communicating. I hope I create a space for a good conversation.

“Bound” and “Own Creation” are for sale ($20 each or best offer). Contact P. Christopher Capp through Insagram DM: @pchristophercapp.

Rawley Chaves-Carden (They/Them)

Lost in (Trans)it

Photography

Rawley Chaves graduated from Rhode Island College with a B.A. in film studies. Through their photography, they strive to convey the idea that there is nothing inherently offensive about nudity. They aim to deconstruct harmful social norms, especially those that pertain to ideologies about sex, gender, beauty, and mental illness. Their artistic influences include Marina Abramovic, Frida Kahlo, and Francesca Woodman. They currently live in Seekonk, MA with their wife, three cats, and three chickens.

Lost in (Trans)it is for sale ($100).  Contact Rawley at rawleychaves@yahoo.com.

Saeroi Yune (he/they/neo pronouns)

All At Once

Digital Art

i am a multidisciplinary artist and writer inspired by ascension, autobiography, connection, growth, and mythology. for me, creating comes from a place of deep love and hope for all living things and the worlds we live in. art is a passage through which intense emotions – great pain, great joy, great anger and great sorrow – are transmuted into stories and beauty. art is a place to reckon with, accept, and unconditionally love all parts of oneself; this is the lens through which i approach my transness. transition, dysphoria, euphoria, and simply being alive while being falling outside societal conventions of gender means that i have experienced pain and joy that would have otherwise been outside of my awareness. i welcome the beauty and terror of being liminal, of alchemizing the self. we are all cyborgs and we are all divine. i can be found on instagram and twitter @saeroiyune.

All at Once is for sale (4 x 6: $5 // 12 x 17: $20 // 16 x 24: $50). Contact Saeroi at saeroiyune@gmail.com.

Tia Sky (They/Them)

Fluidity

Mixed Media

Tia Sky (they/them) is an a mental and sexual health educator, social media content creator, artist, and student based in the Boston area. They study Sociology and Community, Power, and Queer Futures at Boston University.

Fluidity is for sale ($10 for 5″x7″ print, $15 for 12″x16″ print, and $20 for 18″x24″ print). Contact Tia at tiasky@bu.edu.