Throughout my time in the Queer Perspectives / Histories class, I was exceedingly absent due to ongoing issues outside of university.
However, this didn’t stop me from pursuing a project I love and enjoy.
With the classes, we were sectioned off into different groups. My group is lovely, easy to talk to and able to get along with and reach out to! I took on the role as a simple team member, but came up with several ideas that we could use towards tying our work together as a team piece. I thought of the idea of a questions / anonymous message box called ‘Queerios’, (a take on Cheerios brand breakfast cereal), where viewers of our exhibition could place in their thoughts and questions about the various pieces. In an exhibition, it’s always nice to have a comment box, to leave your nice comments or questions you’d like answered about the piece.
We started the first session I was in with listening to other peoples presentations on a queer icon that they had found within the days lesson. It was exceedingly interesting to learn about figures in history that weren’t well known! I found the presentations enlightening. It gave me ideas on what I could possibly create as my final piece for the exhibition at the end of the elective. The way it was presented, the people, etc.
The following weeks, we began to focus on our own work for our end of elective show. I decided to focus on a fictional character as my queer icon. Albeit, the character I’ve chosen is not inherently LGBTQ+, to me, he makes me feel more confident in myself as a trans male, with representation in the fandom and various headcanons depicting him as trans and gay. To me, this is an outlet, something I’m able to project on and feel happy within myself. To have a place to project is important, I think, to anyone. As I have a personality disorder too (Borderline Personality Disorder), it goes hand in hand too and helps stabilise myself. To have a space where I can talk about how much one thing has helped me is really exciting and I am so excited to show off my story and my piece to everyone in the show.
I go more into detail in my personal story which will be used in my piece. I decided to create game posters of sorts, as it’s something I’m highly into, using black cut outs/silhouettes of the character (Prompto Argentum from Final Fantasy XV) and using my personal story on the piece, cut into four different parts. In my piece, I use my skills in Photoshop to create the look I’m going for. I will upload the separate pieces when I’ve absolutely perfected them and I will also upload pieces from my show.
To others, this may not seem like a ‘queer icon’, but to me, he is. He makes me feel comfortable in any situation and is a genuine help. It ties in with history too, I’ve been out since I was 14 years old, and I’ve never felt true comfort within myself, and probably won’t until I am transitioning. Despite this, I’m exceedingly happy to say that having a character who is very similar to me, has made me ease the discomfort slightly. I think it’s important to have personal stories in projects like these to show that your own history is important and causes an impact to your own LGBTQ+ life.
For presenting, I was thinking of putting my pieces of artwork flush to the wall with command strips, probably printing it in A3 too. I wanted it to be big, yet look nice. I’m debating whether doing 4 A4 pieces, or 2 A3, I will think on this in the next few days. I’m also aware I’m cutting it close to the deadline, however due to mitigating circumstances, I couldn’t help it. However, I’m now excitedly ready to get to work!
With my work, I decided to make a piece about myself, focusing on my own LGBTQ+ story.For me, I don’t have a particular ‘hero’. I have something that’s close to me, because for me, my own accomplishments are what stand out for me.In my piece, I focused on a more expression based feeling of being in the LGBTQ+ community, focusing on projecting, as well as cosplay, etc.Being able to express yourself is such an incredible and integral part of the community.My process really didn’t take that long. I wrote my story, and thought of an idea of how I wanted to go ahead with it. I retrieved information from things like black out poems, and stories.The font, and the white rectangles behind certain words show my research in this case.
My piece, here, shows my research and looks into the different types of poetry and books that look similar to this.I specifically used Marion font as it came across as a book type font. Though my work may not be to the highest standards, due to time constraints, to me, I truly adore it. I feel as if it shows the personal tone and the feelings I’m trying to convey.If someone who didn’t know me personally read this, I feel as if they would understand how I feel, and to me, as a trans and gay man in the LGBTQ+ community, it’s incredibly important for me to feel understood, as a lot of the time I don’t even understand myself.I’m very, very pleased with my work, and I feel as if I met the criteria well.
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