Boi Becomes Hare

I am an artist that also happens to be transgender man, my new artworks 'Boi Becomes Hare' are a challenge to the conventional "trans narrative" by merging images of the mythological hare and my body post top surgery in a series of fanatsy self portrait pencil "selfies." This is a long term ongoing project to be expanded upon.

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hares

Gaston Phoebus, Livre de la chasse, Avignon ca. 1375-1400

BnF, Français 619, fol. 12v

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hares

Gaston Phoebus, Le Livre de la chasse, Paris ca. 1407

NY, Morgan, MS M. 1044, fol. 15v

[hexelhasel-blog]

‘In the black furrow of a field I saw an old witch-hare this night; And she cocked a lissome ear, And she eyed the moon so bright, And she nibbled of the green; And I whispered “Wh-s-st! witch-hare,” Away like a ghostie o’er the field She fled, and left the moonlight there.’

- “The Hare,” Walter de la Mare

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‘Three Hares Looking at the Moon’ ( Ming dynasty, 1368-1644 ). Ink and colour on silk.

Image and text courtesy Freer Sackler. Chinese Art

Copyright with museum.

[heaveninawildflower]

‘Two hares eating berries’ (13th century) by Ibn Bakhtishu.

Image taken from Kitab Na’t al-hayawan wa-manafi'ihi (Animals and their Uses). Joint authorship; Aristotle, Ibn Bakhtishu.

This file has been provided by the  British Library from its digital collections.

This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Wikimedia.

[archivalia]

Glockendon Prayer ca. 1535 at the ÖNB Vienna http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AL00164227

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Luttrell Psalter, England ca. 1325-1340

[boibecomeshare]

Ink and pencil on Khadi Paper 12" X 16.5"

[boibecomeshare]

Ink and pencil on Khadi Paper 12" X 16.5"

[boibecomeshare]

Ink and pencil on Khadi Paper 12" X 16.5"

[boibecomeshare]

Ink and pencil on Khadi Paper 12" X 16.5"

[boibecomeshare]

Ink and pencil on Khadi Paper 12" X 16.5"

[historieofbeafts]

There are four types of hare:  mountain, field, marsh and wandering. The wandering hare is the most dangerous.

Hares have fore-knowledge both of wind and weather.

“And as it is said of the Lyons, that with their tails they stir up their strength and courage; so are the ears of this Beast like Angels wings, Ships sails, and rowing Oars, to help her in her flight.”

Warm hare’s blood is good for sunburn, acne and skin disease

Eating hare’s brains cures both poisoning and memory problems.

A person carrying the ankle bone of a hare will never experience stomach pain.

[hectorarturo]

Hare raising by andy2402

[boibecomeshare]

‘Boi Becomes Hare,’ is a series of small intimate expressive pencil abstractions on canvas, paper and burlap that explore my ambivalence about the conventional “trans narrative” and the way that I fit into such a narrative as a transgender man of colour. In these art works I assemble and merge together self portrait “selfie” images of my postoperative chest scars together with ghostly abstract drawings of a archetypically symbolic hare - a creature that has appeared widely in anthropomorphic form throughout many cultures in fables folklore, art, literature and mythology. Combining the image of an animal and these scratchy, immediate imperfect drawings of myself works as means to displace and disorder the traditional Western idea of “transformation,” and as a way to envision the different, unexpected, radical and more expansive ways that the trans trajectory might grow away from socially expected Western cultural and neoliberal mass media circulated images that reassert binary gender norms and restrictions.

I am intending to use these smaller works as stand-alone pieces and also as the basis for larger scale artworks.

[boibecomeshare]

Ink and pencil on Khadi Paper 12" X 16.5"

[boibecomeshare]

Ink graphite and pencil on Burlap Canvas - 9 x 12 Inches