The issue 12 of OUT/LOOK serves as a platform for emergent intersectional critiques of mainstream notions of queerness. In the 2017 version of OUT/LOOK, I am inspired to create work that pushes intersectional queer critiques forward to consider possible connections we can make to unsettle systems of oppression while carefully holding conflicts and contradictions arising from such situated resistance. Some of the pieces in this issue that help formulate my artistic response are Charles Fernández’s “Undocumented Aliens in the Queer Nation”; Kt. Vermeulen’s “A Family Comes Out”; and the Letters to the Editors section.
soft skin explores softness as an articulation of strength and challenges the cis-heteropatriarchal notion of “tough skin” as a standard of survival. Inspired by the transmasculine experience of being off testosterone, the work traces the shifting contours of emotional/bodily landscape to explore various borders and boundaries that confine our existence. soft skin is a project of profound grief, vulnerability, and liberation, which is precisely what it means to become embodied.
2017, color pencils on bristol paper, 11 x 17″
