DRAG is my sketch book
Making / Titting about in drag costumes and props, often helps me clarify my thinking around grainy, uncomfortable, tangled ideas- often relating to politics and culture. This "make first"* process often used by makers to very literally feel our way through an idea. The drag characters and images I make go on to inform other aspect of my work, often if a very oblique way- sometimes more explicitly. Here are some examples:
Thisimage by Sarah Li documents me using aquatic, scrotty boi, drag to think about the mythologising (and with that either denying or eulogising) of othernesses. to me this seems particularly insidious with disability- disabled people being the focus of “ inspiration porn” while simultaneously being disbelieved , ignored and denied our basic rights.
My personal experience is that this myth-ing/othering also applies to bi / pan sexualities, gender fluidity, and non-monogamy. These aspects of my life are often viewed by others as miraculously awe inspiring or utterly fabricated. When in fact, my experience of them is that they are part of the everyday fabric of my life- holding within them multitudes and very occasional extremes, but generally just pretty normal.
For a very funny and eloquent definition of inspiration porn, check out activist and comedian Stella Young (who coined the term) s tedtalk on the subject
image description: colour photo, exterior . Kitt, a white shaven headed human with a flat silicone chest plate wears an open blue and purple shell suit jacket and matching merboi tail. they are standing up with a bright pink crutch on their right arm, in their left hand they hold a bright pink sheet of card with the following text written in scrappy purple handwriting “ still not a myth
still not a legend”
*phrase used by Craft Council to describe this approach.
Black Friday represents and activates so much capitalist and consumerist foulness- I wanted to create something that’s not that and this is it:
On social media I asked if anyone wanted to join the Green Party, offering to fund two x £60 for individual memberships for 1 year. From a recent sale of artwork featuring my drag character Shawn- a Disability liberation campaigner, environmental activist and hot chimera leather daddy!
Image description: Colour photo, interior. Kitt, a white shaven headed human, dressed as Shawn the leather daddy merman, reclines on a bed with a black and silver mer tail, bare chest-ed apart from a black and silver harness. In their mouth they hold a Green Party Rossett. White digital text across the image reads “ This black Friday Join the Green Party. Support hope, love, clean oceans, hot merfolk and taxing the out of billionaires. Shawn the Leather Daddy Merman will pay your subs(cription) for a year . I unexpectedly sold some artwork featuring my drag character Shawn and I’d like to use it to cover the cost for two people to join the Green Party for a year- more info in caption”
Global Ocean Treaty is a real thing! (more info about how to support it - link in bio or check out @greenpeaceuk )
I’m a mer-nerd: part human, part mythical sea creatures are an enduring obsession (not uncommon among us trans/ gender non conforming folk!) imagine my joy when such a creature turned up on pre christmas telly… & they appeared to have gender chaos powers too- excellent. but ( less excellent), these properties are contextualised in a pretty binary way: anger / displays of power =testosterone = male presenting. switching between male& female presenting (from a human perspective) means you can be admired for being both “strong” & “beautiful”, no space for anything other / beyond. Then… that’s it. no more reference to any of that! fair enough, it’s a busy, ambitious story. with lots about binaries .land-sea. human- beyond human. ordinary-extraordinary. referencing an array of human harms exacerbated by binary systems, &thinking. among all this was the inter species love story plus epically ridiculous “ i’m sort of regulating my body for you right now too…” boner line. which i absolutely loved & hated. the more i’ve thought about it, the more i’ve felt the regulating thing is kind of central to the story - how/ how much / why / can we regulate our selves (personally, socially, culturally, emotionally , behaviourally, legally) to accommodate / respond to / get by alongside / delight with, others? many folks would probably be happy to do some pretty extensive “regulating” for hot, abandoned wearhouse, joy. But would possibly be less keen on less immediate -pleasure -focussed forms of regulation. i think telly art especially is dead good for presenting stories about alternative ways of doing stuff .id like more telly about about collaborative regulation (of many forms)to
create multi species / beyond binary connections, empathies, understandings-
ideally with hot merfolk, please, natch.