Shimmer Shimmer draws influence from a history of queer visual activism, artists using New York City as a site of political disruption, and feminist use of the body as a political site - while staying true to my proclivity for camp aesthetics. 

After 10 years of transgender “hormone therapy” I stopped taking testosterone as a durational performance begun during my residency at Baxter St CCNY. The desire to occupy new subjective space inspired the physical changes I am undergoing and the ensuing photographs in Shimmer Shimmer. 

The figurative images in Shimmer Shimmer featuremy glitter-adorned nude form in familiar, gendered, art historical poses, photographed by my queer-femme partner Sarah Van Dyck on location at the historically gay section at the People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park in Queens, New York (known as Riis Beach), now a haven during the summer months for NYC queers. In Mars my figure is backed by the iconic, boarded-up sanatorium surrounded by barbed-wire fence that has come to symbolize this anti-assimilationist queer space. My trans*queer body stands strong in an implied forward motion while one arm reaches back and subtle highlights along my fingertips imply strength and hope for the future. 

The shimmer of glitter on my figure suggests a mythical, celestial presence and hints at a connection to astrology, an important mode of spiritual connection for us and our queer community. The still lifes of glitter as “constellations” with titles such as Sextile and Conjunction (astrological aspects) reiterate this connection and signal to the viewer that the title Mars, for example, refers to the planet not the (gendered) god. 

The performative de-medicalization of my body, layered atop subtle gestural shifts of hip position or shoulder height and the metaphorical use of glitter as a representation of change itself—ever-elusive, perceived differently according to light—culminate in binaries coming undone, collapsing into one another or being non-existent where one might expect them to surface.