Trans & Gender Expansive Art Showcase 2026
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Trans & Gender Expansive Art Showcase 2026
Presented by Boston University Office for the Arts
LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center, 808 Commonwealth Ave.
The Trans & Gender Expansive Art Showcase features creative works by trans & gender expansive artists from Boston University and the Massachusetts community. This showcase celebrates the creative imaginations and voices of trans and gender-expansive creatives.
Highlighting 12 artists, including BU students, faculty, staff, alumni, and local community members, this year’s showcase features artworks in mediums such as poetry, 3D, photography, painting, illustration, and more. The theme of the 2026 showcase is Resistance through Visibility. This exhibition is presented by the LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center and the BU Office for the Arts.
Exhibition Opportunities
Learn more about opportunities like this for student art exhibitions with BU Office for the Arts.
VIRTUAL SHOWCASE
Bowie Matiland (They/Them)
monster smash
Digital Videography
Bowie is a passionate student majoring in Film & Television Studies at Boston University. They have a focus in Screenwriting, and interests in Production Design and Cinematography. They are a transgender-Armenian artist who aims to create stories that focus on existentialism, mental illness, and queer life that are messy, absurd, funky, and unapologetically raw.
monster smash features a non-binary character who learns to be satisfied with being single. While it is not a film that is about being transgender, it surrounds a transgender, queer character. “I believe it is important to have media that is specifically about transgender identity and experience; however, I also believe it is important to have media that has transgender people existing in stories, not about their identity.”
Soe Noire (He/Him)
AFROMYSTICISM
Poetry
SOE NOIRE is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist, community organizer, and filmmaker based in Western Massachusetts. Noire’s work aims to capture and celebrate femme nostalgia and Afromysticism based on his lived experiences.
Noire began community organizing in 2023, creating the First Black Queer magazine/arts initiative in Massachusetts, Frizz Media, created to celebrate Black Queer whimsy, joy, and creativity. With drag events [as his drag persona, Miss Alaynia] held in cyberspace through Frizz Drag Nite, and Covid-Cautious performance art shows like Fros and Faes, Noire is passionate about creating artwork and radical third spaces that celebrate Black Queerness and Joy.
“My work explores AFROMYSTICISM and spiritual practice that celebrates the intersections of West African and trans identity. It celebrates spirit, and the multitudes in which Black people can experience gender euphoria and sexuality. These concepts are heavily mentioned in both the song and the poem. Love and care for trans and gender expansive Black people means celebrating our queerness instead of trying to play it down for the comfort of others.”
Soe Noire (He/Him)
AFROMYSTICISM MANTRA
Song
SOE NOIRE is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist, community organizer, and filmmaker based in Western Massachusetts. Noire’s work aims to capture and celebrate femme nostalgia and Afromysticism based on his lived experiences.
Noire began community organizing in 2023, creating the First Black Queer magazine/arts initiative in Massachusetts, Frizz Media, created to celebrate Black Queer whimsy, joy, and creativity. With drag events [as his drag persona, Miss Alaynia] held in cyberspace through Frizz Drag Nite, and Covid-Cautious performance art shows like Fros and Faes, Noire is passionate in creating artwork and radical third spaces that celebrate Black Queerness and Joy.
Mary Plinthe (She/Her)
Two
Oil, pastel, graphite on stretched canvas
30×15 in
“I am Matilda Love. I love touching the world and seeing it too. In 2027, I will have a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. By 2030, I will have everything I have ever wanted and will be engaged in healing the world full-time.”
Liberation from a restrictive gender system will unfold, and is unfolding, in the same way that all authority will be dissolved. Small actions, mundane necessities, and interpersonal action. This work is a small piece of care invested by one person, hoping to pass on that hope and care to another.
Eli Siegel (They/Them)
Celestial Bodies
Oil paint on canvas
The moon that pulls the tides does not know that the rocky shore cliffs erode with each passing orbit. After all, it is not the moon who smooths out the coasts for thousands of years but the waves that ebb and flow beneath its gaze. The gentle ripples of curves are worn away with each passing day, revealing fine grains of who I know myself to be.
In celestial bodies, I have depicted myself rejoicing in a sublime moment of euphoria, in which I felt truly comfortable in both my environment and my body. This painting was based on a walk across the frozen Charles River in 2025, where I felt both keenly alone and yet surrounded by a city that I call home. This painting represents the vibrancy that comes.
Eli Siegel (They/Them)
Essence Reclamation
Oil paint, paper, and fiber on canvas
The moon that pulls the tides does not know that the rocky shore cliffs erode with each passing orbit. After all, it is not the moon who smooths out the coasts for thousands of years but the waves that ebb and flow beneath its gaze. The gentle ripples of curves are worn away with each passing day, revealing fine grains of who I know myself to be.
When I first began painting Essence reclamation, I felt frustrated and trapped in my body, so material application was chaotic and rooted in pain. As I let the creative catharsis wash over me, I felt my painting practice become more methodical, like churning water settling into a calm lull. By the time I was finishing the painting, I felt much more at peace with myself and my art. I know this painting started out in a negative place, but it now represents my transformation towards opening up to others and realizing I don’t need to shroud myself in anger anymore.
Gabriel Joy Reid (She/They)
My Wizard of Oz Story
Digital illustration comic
Gabriel Joy Reid (she/they) is a cartoonist, animator, and educator originally from Kansas City, Kansas. They graduated from Northeastern University with a BA in Film and Animation and from Boston University with an MFA in Visual Narrative. From superheroes to social justice, sci-fi to slice-of-life, they strive to bring joy, knowledge, and hope to anyone who reads their work.
“My Wizard of Oz Story is an autobiographical comic about how I became more comfortable in my gender identity through musical theater. Growing up, I always felt like I could never fully show up as my full self at the religious schools I attended. But in high school, musical theater gave me the space to explore new ways to present who I am, helping me to become more confident and to build the courage I needed to come out as transgender years down the line. After posting this comic on social media in 2025, the comments section was flooded with similar experiences: how the costumes, the make-up, and the performances on stage helped former theater kids, and current theater kids, become more confident expressing their full selves. It’s why spaces like the theater are so important, and I hope that this comic can help not only illuminate my story but also help young people tell their own stories of trans joy as well.”
Follow Gabriel on Instagram at @gabrieljoyyy.
Catgirl Virus (They/She)
come take a seat!
milk paint, glitter spray, and carnish on reclaimed wood
CATGIRL VIRUS was born out of necessary action in order to survive and find joy in a world that seeks to belittle their existence. Together, their work experiments with themes of orientalism, pop culture, queerness, patriarchy, belonging, self-realization/determination, and transformation through a light-hearted and often comical way. They seek to help others find comfort within themselves through addressing these themes. You too may be a CATGIRL nya~!
In one of CATGIRL VIRUS’ many lives, they decided to start their own maid cafe! Through their cafe, they sought to emulate the adversities in their lived experiences through play, cuteness, materiality, and illogical simulacras of everyday life in order to create necessary dialogues around Ornamentalism, Orientalism, and Gendered Servitude. This colorful cafe table and chairs set was purposely made to be at an awkward height—comfortable only for a child—and one of the chairs is even broken! People are invited to take a seat at the table, and fumble through recreations of everyday kitchenware that are toxic, unwieldy, and absurd. Through this set, the catgirls reflect on their experiences of infantilization, forced feminization (even by queer peers), and navigations of systems/institutions that were not made to support people like them in mind. Through embracing their lived discomfort and alchemizing it into “unseemingly” cute aesthetic, they seek to show that if your assigned “role” is flat, you don’t have to stay in a place of conditionality. You have the power to agitate and transform your surroundings.
Follow CATGIRL VIRUS on Instagram at @catgirl.virus.
Jasper (They/Them)
to her their great regret
Poetry
Jasper is an actor and poet based in Boston, Massachusetts. Their work explores surrealism, the unspoken longing written between the lines of history, and the expanse of queer and trans identity. They love queering the canon and making men into butches.
This poem transforms the words of “Onania, or the heinous sin of self-pollution,” an 18th century pamphlet condemning masturbation, into a revolutionary text. Though the gender-nonconforming person at the heart of the text is demonized and fetishized by the people around them, they find euphoria in their “monstrous” nature, and they bare their fangs against a world that fears their beauty. They also find a monstrous resistance in the tale of Agdistis, an intersex Greek deity who similarly drove people to madness.
Ga Tsung (They/Them)
Destiny (命運）
Cardstock Paper
Ga Tsung 嘉聰 (they/them) is a Toisanese-born, Boston-based multidisciplinary artist. Their art blends multicultural experiences, linguistic variance, and spiritual intentions.
“Destiny is a poem I wrote about my tattoo, which is the Chinese character for the word ‘Destiny.’ In this poem, I write about my tattoo’s affirmation of my transgender and cultural identities. It is a highly visible tattoo, placed in the center of my neck, displaying the love I have for my family’s culture and masking my Adam’s apple (allowing me to feel more comfortable with my body as a transfeminine person).”
Follow Ga on Instagram at @ga_tsung.
Ga Tsung (They/Them)
Wood Heals, Fire Dreams （乙巳, 丙午 ）
Spoken Word Performance
Ga Tsung 嘉聰 (they/them) is a Toisanese-born, Boston-based multidisciplinary artist. Their art blends multicultural experiences, linguistic variance, and spiritual intentions.
“Destiny is a poem I wrote about my tattoo, which is the Chinese character for the word ‘Destiny.’ In this poem, I write about my tattoo’s affirmation of my transgender and cultural identities. It is a highly visible tattoo, placed in the center of my neck, displaying the love I have for my family’s culture and masking my Adam’s apple (allowing me to feel more comfortable with my body as a transfeminine person).”
Follow Ga on Instagram at @ga_tsung.
Geo Ferrari (He/They)
T4T Cowboy4Cowboy
Yarn, wooden dowel, Tunisian crochet
Geo (he/they) is a multi-disciplinary designer and artist who explores queerness, transness, fatness, the body, and more in his work. Lately, Geo’s focus has been fiber arts, including crochet, embroidery, cross stitch, and tufting.
T4T Cowboy4Cowboy celebrates the beauty of love between transmasculine people. By adapting a knit pattern made by non-binary knit designer John Elliot into crochet, Geo Ferrari creates a tribute to T4T care and joy. Using a color palette reminiscent of the nonbinary flag, Geo expands a classic gay cowboy motif to include trans and gender expansive lovers.
Geo Ferrari (He/They)
Transcendent
etching and monoprint
Geo (he/they) is a multi-disciplinary designer and artist who explores queerness, transness, fatness, the body, and more in his work. Lately, Geo’s focus has been fiber arts, including crochet, embroidery, cross stitch, and tufting.
Transcendent comes from a series of prints that were later adapted into laser cut and engraved iridescent acrylic pieces. The butterfly is a symbol of freedom and transformation, and within it are details representing the transgender symbol, Brazilian flag, fat body, and more. Pinned and put on display in a hyper-visible manner, Transcendent speaks to the state many trans people find themselves in today. Nonetheless, Transcendent stands proud.
Ali Trepanier (They/Them)
Button Up
Digital Photography
Ali Trepanier is a non-binary interdisciplinary artist. They use self-portrait photography to honor their existence and mark the passage of time, exploring iterations of self.
“Every day is a performance, and as a non-binary person, I embrace the spectrum that my gender exists on. I dress for me – a mixture of how my mind and body feel, compounded with what my path looks like. A selection of my button up shirts compose the background of this photograph. I have found safety and comfort in button ups as they allow me to embody more masculine expressions, even when it’s my dad’s old and terribly oversized shirt (pictured on me).”
