nilo's queer art mentor application
[these essays were submitted as part of my application to the 2023 Queer|Art mentor program]
1. Which Mentor(s) are you interested in working with? For each Mentor listed, describe why you’d like to build a relationship with them specifically.
I am interested in working with Stephen Winter. ‘Representation is vital to letting queer people understand that there’s a world beyond them’ (Winter, 2022).
I tell our stories, and make work that reflects us. My practice is heavily informed by a desire to see myself and people who look like me represented; representation to me has absolutely been vital in order to find out how to make my life as a Black trans woman. As I continue this practice I would appreciate Stephen’s guidance and vision. Specifically because I make work about my community in the same way that his work has reflected his.
Winter notes that Black queer voices are largely absent from the cinematic canon - Portrait of Jason is ‘the most spotlighted film that has a Black gay person at its center’ (Macfarlane, 2015), standing next to Paris is Burning, and more recently, Moonlight. Even within the small queer canon we have, most of these stories have historically been directed by people who are not in fact part of the queer community.
I appreciate Stephen’s goal to reflect in Jason and Shirley (2015) what he thought ‘would be inside of Jason’s mind, as Portrait of Jason (1967) is a reflection of Shirley’s mind.’ (Macfarlane, 2015). In addition, Winter has described Chocolate Babies (1996) as a ‘what-if’ cross between his experience in Act Up Chicago as well as experience with AIDS activists of the 90s; the way that his work draws on real-life conversations, representing Black life as the ‘twinning of outrage and the heart’ (Winter, 2021), is a quality I am trying to replicate and learn in my own work.
Learning how to live, and learning how to make work which helps you and those around you live, (or reflects the ways in which you are struggling to live), is another point of inspiration I find in Stephen’s work. If I were to have a relationship with Stephen I would ask him - how did you find your way as a Black gay man growing up in the 80s - where did you look for guidance or help? Especially having lost so many older mentors to the AIDS crisis - how did you make it through?
Winter’s critiques of the white American film industry in the 90s describe how Black and Black queer voices in film were silenced both on an institutional level, (‘it was institutionally inconceivable for black people to be seen as directors’), and an interpersonal/cultural level (‘white filmmakers in the 90s desired to separate themselves from black culture’) (Winter, 2020) - I would also appreciate his insight and vision on my art process as a young Black trans filmmaker whose voice is not as institutionally constrained as it would have been in the 1990s - but who is still navigating institutional challenges as well as coming from a similar isolation to the cinematic canon.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK1ac0mT8FA
Chocolate Babies Q&A moderated by Jeremy O Harris
https://jezebel.com/director-stephen-winter-has-been-ahead-of-the-curve-th-1847608400
2. Describe a specific project that you’d like to work on with a Mentor during the 2022 Mentorship cycle.
In the 2023 Mentorship cycle I would like to continue working on my project, ‘Trans Living Archive’. This project is film-based, and I am currently conducting ongoing interviews. My goal with this project is to create an archive of Black and brown trans people, which can be looked to by other Black and brown trans people as a way to see themselves reflected, learn about themselves, and help them to navigate their lives.
The project focuses on a series of questions, organized around three states: Past, Present, Future.
Past: these questions are aimed to capture the trans person’s experiences before coming into awareness of themselves as trans. For example, ‘How did you used to see your life possibilities?’, ‘Do you know who came before you, in a [historical/social/legal] sense?’, ‘What kind of images did you grow up with?’ ‘What was it like existing alongside these images?’.
Present: these questions address the trans person’s current reality. For example, ‘What does it feel like to see yourself reflected in [media/community/chosen family]?’, ‘‘What is it like to make yourself over in a new image?’.
Future: these questions address the trans person’s visions for themselves as they move into the future. For example, ‘What possibilities do you see for your life in the future?’, ‘How have these possibilities changed?’, ‘What do you hope for [yourself/your chosen family/your community]?’
Over the course of the 2023 mentorship cycle, I would continue conducting my interviews and continue expanding the Trans Living Archive’s database. My end goal with this project is to create and maintain an archive with a full and varied range of experiences, which will culminate in a film and website which Black and brown trans people can look to as a means to learn about themselves and navigate their lives.
I would be eager to share my work with Stephen once a month for our mentorship meetings, and get advice, feedback, and guidance from him as my project continues to evolve. Between Stephen’s mentorship and sharing in my cohorts’ community, I think my project would thrive at Queer Art Mentor.
3. Describe your artistic practice; how it has evolved; and how you would like to see yourself and your art develop. Please reference the work samples submitted in this application.
My artistic practice is based around sharing and understanding within my Black trans community. Recently, I worked with Tourmaline around the development of the concept of my film ‘Trans Living Archive.’ Specifically, through our discussions we worked on consolidating various different lenses and frameworks I am interested in using to understand Black trans lives. Tourmaline continues to help me by offering spiritual and historical context to the work I am doing.
Initially, my interest in film was primarily in images of black trans women; having grown up with very few images of black trans women. I was interested in finding my own images, and understanding where the images I grew up with came from. ‘There is no acceptable image of oneself in the society’ (Baldwin, 1961) Baldwin’s analysis of the significance of imagery (and lack thereof) in impacting the emotional, social, and economic lives of Black people, informed the beginning of my work with Trans Living Archive.
The initial questions offered to participants being interviewed for Trans Living Archive (film) included ‘What kind of images did you grow up with?’ ‘What was it like existing alongside these images?’. In the context of my own transition, I was initially focused on images due to the weight of my feelings of isolation from my own body; the first thing I felt I had to ‘deal with’ was my reflection, my surface. Through dealing with this, my interest and practice has now shifted to understanding and capturing trans lives as a whole, for the purpose of creating a point of reference for other trans people to understand themselves by.
For me, my practice in film/writing is as important as creating and holding space for my community and my chosen family+friends on a regular basis. At my ‘Love Show and Tell’ art exhibition, me and my co-organiser Teniola Funmi brought together queer Black and brown artists to share their art in a show exploring understandings of queer love. My most recent art exhibition, ‘Black Trans Living Archive’ was organized around Black trans artists sharing images of themselves, for the purpose of creating a ‘living’ digital archive of Black trans images to share and better understand ourselves by.
Baldwin’s (1961) concept of the ‘image of self’ as something which informs the life course continues to be a major inspiration in my art practice. Through my ongoing work interviewing trans people for the Black Trans Living Archive, I am attempting to capture how being trans intersects with participants’ romantic, platonic, economic, and familial lives, as well as the potential they see for themselves, in all of these areas.
Looking forward, I would like to continue capturing and archiving the lives of my community members. I also want to ease the isolation of my trans family members by presenting work which we can see ourselves in - I believe that the ‘erasure [of trans history] is a form of violence’ - (Tourmaline formerly Reina Gossett, 2017), and I see my art practice as a way to create new history, for myself and my community.