Missy (2020) is a series comprised of photographs, a short film, and an installation in which I perform my mother’s actions: primping, adjusting, dressing in her home in Columbus, OH. I take on my mother’s appearance: makeup, hair, attire, expressions, and gestures— performing as her to better understand her experiences in times where my Transness has strained yet deepened our bond.
Those Big Brown Almost Black Gay Eyes (2020) is a short film where I reenact the moments, conversations, and arguments my mother and I had as we tried to understand one another. My mother is a fiercely hard-working, single mother. Growing up, most of my time spent with her was watching her do her hair and makeup. In the film, I stare in the mirror and reflect on these moments. I imagine how her anxiety used to increase as we argued and discussed my queerness while she got ready. The spectrum of emotions my mother felt are present in the way each space is shot and lit, warm lights of pink and gold fill her bed and bathroom to illuminate the intimacy we shared in those spaces, as I stand imitating her actions in front of the lens. Some of the actions in the performance are from my point of view as a child. While I am present physically only as my mother, my childhood self is present in the camera angles for each image. The camera is positioned at the eye level I’d be at during these moments. I also appear as a tertiary subject through a family photograph of me wearing a dress, hanging on my mother’s vanity.
The photographs exist in a photo book recreated from the notebook my mother used to write her diary entries in that she gifted me. I cover up scanned text from the notebook with family photo archives, only sharing glimpses of what she wrote, hiding the rest under the photos, leaving only fragments of the page underneath. I empathize with the raw nature of my mother’s writing, only sharing the fragments that help tell her side of the story, while keeping some of the most personal and vulnerable moments just between us. Inlaid between these passages are photographs from my performance as my mother: my hand pulling out a cigarette from a pack of custom pink Marlboros; my hand on the steering wheel and the other applying the last glob of mascara; my hand pressed against the edge of the bathtub, wrapped in a bathrobe, hair up in a towel. These photographs memorialize my witnessing my mother’s femininity, which has an influence on my own representation of self. I have a resemblance to my mother, but I do not look identical. Despite our closeness, I will never understand the inner workings of my mother. I am influenced by her but shaped into someone separate. We have different histories, locations and bodies.
His Secret Was Killing His Shine (2020) I re-imagine my mother’s real-life personal objects throughout her home. Opulence fashioned from household objects are arranged across her vanity and bathroom sink. I drenched the surface of real pop-icon objects in crystals, sequins, glitter, and fur mosaics. I transform her objects with these gestures to queer them, to dress them in the appropriated feminine tropes of queer night life, pop culture, and the magic of movies. By queering the objects she uses every day, I impose a queerness on her narrative she never asked for. I re-imagine them through a fantasy feminine outside the reality of their source material. Beyond the objects’ glitzy surfaces, each stands in for my mother and her sexuality, gender, race, and class.
The actions I perform in Missy do not feel as intimate as our relationship or the stories she shares. Instead, they are primping actions that just skim the surface of intimacy, curling bangs that were already curled, applying mascara to an already made-up face. Rather than embodying her, they imitate her from the distance of my adult self to better understand her position. Missy is a reconciliation, contrasting our competing narratives, my Transness with her straightness. Our collaboration demonstrates empathy on both sides, as we try to understand each other. The transformation of my mother’s likeness and personal objects, intentionally blur the authorship between mother and child, complicating and celebrating a dialogue across gender, genealogy, and time.
