Artist Statement

 

In 2023, the City of Markham canceled artist Julian Yi-Zhong Hou's public artwork, Bicycle, because it depicted a gender-nonconforming person and their drag persona. A spokesperson for the city told CBC that publicly displayed art must be “inclusive and sensitive to all." The notion that public art is inclusive of everyone erroneously associates neutrality and inclusivity with existing colonial cisheteropatriarchal public artworks such as monuments that honour white settler men. Aside from Pride Week, trans people live in cities that almost never “speak” to us as residents.

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What might the city look like if trans communities used locative digital media to speak to one another in everyday urban spaces? Could playful trans imagery and trans-positive messaging in public spaces be affirming and boost morale during a time of widespread trans antagonism?

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In Trans Care (2020), Hil Malatino advocates for an ethics of care in the everyday. Malatino experiences a moment of trans care when he comes upon trans artist Jonah Welch’s billboard in Detroit in 2019, which depicts oblong shapes, lines, and soft colours with the text, "Trans People Are Sacred." Reflecting on this billboard, Malatino writes, “…it’s a real relief to be hailed by a beautiful blob” (p. 26). Malatino continues: "Anonymous, named but not represented, and hailed in the complexity of my need—to be seen and unseen simultaneously, to be comforted and also left alone, to, for once, feel held and witnessed within a public space without being made subject to other people’s witness of me" (p. 29). Malatino describes the necessity for cities to address trans residents without visually representing trans people for cis audiences.

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