I have another residency starting next week, and I've been struggling to get back into In Plain Sight. Not just the work itself, but the headspace I was in when I started it. I don't know if the inspiration has left me, if I'm feeling conflicted, or if the project has simply changed.
For those unfamiliar, In Plain Sight is a portrait and interview project documenting the lives of transgender and nonbinary people across the country. The idea was to tell stories about love, connection, family, and all the ordinary things that make us human. I wanted people to look at these portraits and recognize something familiar. A neighbor, a coworker, a friend, or maybe even a little piece of themselves.
I wanted people to see human beings before they saw transgender people. Simple enough, right?
Well, maybe not.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how badly I want people to see me for who I am rather than what they think I am. Moving to a new community has made me especially aware of this. I notice the looks sometimes. At the gym, in particular, when someone new walks in. That quick glance, sometimes a second one, sometimes outright staring, and I wonder what's going through their head.
Are they trying to figure out if I'm a man or a woman? Are they curious about my appearance? Or am I just hyperaware of how I look and assigning meaning to a perfectly innocent interaction?
I don't know. And that's part of what makes it uncomfortable.
I want people to get to know me before deciding who or what I am. I want to be seen as a neighbor, an artist, a friend, someone who loves their dog and occasionally makes a fool of themselves. I don't want my gender to be the most interesting thing about me before we've even had a conversation.
But here's the uncomfortable part. I do exactly the same thing to other people.
We all do.
We look at someone and make assumptions based on how they dress, carry themselves, speak, and a thousand other things. We try to figure out where they fit into our understanding of the world. Sometimes we're right. Often we're not.
And yet, here I am, creating an entire art project asking people to look beyond those first impressions.
Maybe I've been asking the wrong thing.
Maybe the goal isn't to stop people from making judgments. To be honest, I'm not sure that's even possible. Maybe it's to encourage them to remain curious long enough to discover what that first glance missed. To take the time, make the investment, and really look.
There's another layer to this project that emerged through the interviews. Many of the people I've spoken with don't necessarily want to be seen. In fact, some would prefer to hide in plain sight.
And there's an interesting contradiction. I'm creating portraits to make people visible, while some of the very people I'm portraying would rather go about their lives without being noticed.
Maybe there's something in that.
I've been toying with the idea of a seek-and-find game. “Can you find the transgender person in this picture?” Something like a cross between Salvador Dalí and Where's Waldo? I am joking but, frankly, I don't completely hate it. What if the work asked people to look a little longer? To question what they think they're seeing? To discover something they didn't notice the first time around?
I've also been thinking about Corita Kent's bold, simple, colorful prints and the ways she wove messages of faith and love into familiar pop imagery. Messages that might not reveal themselves at first glance. There's something about that approach that feels relevant to what I'm trying to accomplish.
Maybe that's the point of tackling big questions in the first place. The work is in wrestling them to the ground, trying to form them into something understandable or reasonable, like a balloon animal. You start with one idea, twist it around a few times, and hope you end up with something recognizable.
Or at least something that doesn't pop.
Process and progress always seem to be at odds within me. I have this desire to finish, to move forward, to have something tangible to show for the time I've invested. But maybe finishing isn't always the solution. Maybe the time spent questioning, experimenting, and changing direction is just as important as the finished piece.
So this next residency might look a little different. Maybe it's an opportunity to sit with some big ideas and see where they take me, with the modest goal of putting some ink on paper. Maybe it's about creating whatever is moving me in the moment and letting go of all the shoulds.
No matter what happens, I'm sure of two things: A) you'll hear about it, and B) something will be created.
Even if that creation is just more angst.
