Quilted Portraits

Part of "Transcapes" series, began 2018

Looking to Instagram as a platform for queer/trans* self-representation, I am printing photos from friends and other artists that I follow whose accounts capture an element of queer world making as survival strategy. These people and photos remind me that sometimes just being—or just seeing others—is radical. In an era of hyper-visibility of queer/trans* folks, Instagram both replicates and challenges the pitfalls of visibility. While hashtags rely on easy labels and simple statements, the social media platform also champions self-representation and allows for queer and trans* folks to form their own virtual landscape of communities and alternative worlds. It is a place we can see what we want and be seen as we want. However, the ease of finding virtual community through hashtags falsely represents large cohesive queer/trans* communities and may undermine the importance of physical space and interaction.