QUEERING NATURE: THE LANDSCAPE OF QUEER & TRANS-MASCULINITY

NYU BFA THESIS

What does it mean to be queer in nature?

My most recent and on-going project “Queering Nature: The Landscape of Queer and Trans Masculinity,” is an imagination of the symbiotic relationship between queerness and nature as it offers a means to liberation—liberation of the erotic, the body, sexuality, and the gender binary. There is a permission to desire and be desired, without shame. Historically, nature has been framed within a cis, straight white male eye—what we like to call the “hetero masculine eye.” Throughout visual culture, men have sought to “conquer” nature, by means of an American, Western Manifest Destiny. Cis, heterosexual manhood in the wilderness has been visualized by means of control, power, and domination. My work challenges these notions of cis, hetero-masculinity by visualizing queer utopias in which queer and trans people breathe within nature’s ecosystem. Here, queers coexist in symbiosis.

The inspiration behind this body of work, and much of my art, comes from personal explorations of masculinity, gender, and queerness. I am intrigued by how these concepts intersect and how art-making can dream of a queer future in which queer and trans masculinities exist beyond cis-het binaries. Nature is symbolic of a queer liberation offering isolation from urban environments and freedom from gender conformity and heterosexuality. In a trans sense, nature mirrors my evolution in masculinity—a continuous cycle of transition akin to plants and trees undergoing seasonal transformations. Nature is transitory, and is always in transit, as I like to say. There is no finite end to its transition, nor mine—I think, perhaps, I and we are in a constant state of becoming.

When I think of queer & trans masculinity, I am often thinking of Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues

In the opening chapters of the novel, Jess, the butch lesbian protagonist, experiences disbelief upon learning that their friend Frankie, also a butch lesbian, is in a relationship with another butch. Jess struggles to comprehend the possibility of two butch lesbians being romantically involved. However, as Jess reconnects with Frankie later in life, Frankie shares her understanding of masculinity. Through her relationship with another masculine woman, Frankie came to not only appreciate queer masculinity but also found it to be profoundly beautiful within herself. Jess reflects on their own affliation to queer masculinity, describing it as a mystical blend of "thunder and yearning," echoing Frankie's sentiment. I always circle back to this book as I think about my own journey with gender and masculinity.