TRANSGENERATE: A Trans Ritual for Making and Transforming
​ 2023 SMFA Senior Thesis Project

This project explores bodily processes of regeneration, transformation, and connection through a trans perspective. All bodies are porous and in a state of constant transformation. We invite these transformations through the air we breathe, the food we eat, the medications we take, etc. These actions change the makeup of our bodies by bringing elements of the land like air and plants into our bodies. For some, transness can involve embracing bodily change as a way to connect to ourselves, each other, and our environment. In addition, we remap and reimagine our relationships with our bodies through our language and intimacy with each other. This trans body is in a continual social and physical transition that is not a movement from one state to another but a conversation between environment and body. Within a transphobic society, our transitioning bodies are seen as impure, mutilated, and unnatural, an idea steeped in White-supremacist and ableist ideology and made evident recently by increases in legislation restricting transgender healthcare. What does it mean to view a change to the body not as a mutilation but as a celebration of our relationship to land and each other? 

In this piece self-identified trans, gender-queer and gender non-conforming individuals are invited to participate in a ritual of tearing, mending and collaboratively transforming this cloth body/landscape.

Transgenerate escaping the gallery and growing in the Queer Underground
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If you are a trans/genderqueer person or organization/group interested in participating in this project, you can contact me at [email protected]