Taking Up Space
Eight Transgender Artists
June 6 - 28, 2024
Taking Up Space presents the work of eight transgender artists working in a variety of media, including video, digital animation, painting, poetry, and 3D-printed sculpture. The exhibition’s international connections include artists based in Vancouver, B.C., Shanghai, Gateshead (UK), as well as Seattle. The title, provided by ‘Transgender Street Legend’ Left at London (Nat Puff), hints at the ways in which contemporary art by transgender artists opens new spaces for abstraction, both in terms of death and joy. Themes, often breaking down binary oppositions, vary from nature/nurture to phase transition and the trans experience through space and time.
As participating artist Andie DeRoux explains, “Taking up Space for me is about reclaiming my agency and living my authentic self in the world, regardless of other people's comfort around me.” Kitt Peacock’s two-channel video installation Come High Water asks viewers, “What can we learn about trans life by making kin in the underworld?” Valeria Espinal’s mixed media microscopy invites you to see gender and our place in the planet on a different scale.
Gallery Installation: June 6 - 28, 2024
Exhibition Opening: June 6, 2024 from 5-9PM
Featured Artists:
Artist Bio:
Andie’s intuitive paintings employ a unique technique of layered translucent resin, clay and glass with painting both above, inside and below the surfaces. A sense of depth and dimension is created through these layered natural textures, both hard and soft, rhythmic and organic. Andie’s contemplative artwork immerses the viewer in nature’s rhythm and our own consciousness.
Andie Trosper DeRoux was born and raised in Seattle in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by Art and Nature. Both her parents were artists, gardeners and avid hikers. Her mother Wendy Anne Trosper DeRoux was an Art Teacher and llifelong Ceramic & Printmaking artist. She was a member of the Northwest Designer Craftsmen and exhibited her work in the Henry Gallery, Bellevue Art Museum and Whatcom Museum of Art.. Her father Rodger DeRoux was a painter and Interior designer. The family home featured her mother's Printmaking studio and Pottery studio with 2 wheels and an electric kiln. Andie grew up in the Madison Park neighborhood of Seattle Washington, neighboring the Olmsted designed Washington Park Arboretum.
Andie attended Washington State University and received a BFA in painting and sculpture in 1993. She studied under painter Jo Hockenhull, and ceramic artist Ann Christenson with Arthur Gonzalez as visiting artist in residence who was influential in how Andie integrates materials in her work Following Graduation in 1993 with a BFA she moved back to Seattle to pursue Art.
Andie was previously represented by the Friesen Gallery and then the Abmeyer + Wood Gallery in Seattle, (both have closed).
Andie is a Transgender woman and she is an advocate and active member of the LGBTQ+ community in Seattle. She is also Lead Photographer for the city of Seattle’s annual Trans-Pride Celebration. (TransPrideSeattle)
When she isn’t painting in her studio, she can be found hiking and climbing the the trails and mountains of the Pacific Northwest, sailing her boat on Lake Washington, windsurfing on the Columbia River, and exploring Seattle’s numerous gardens and parks. Travel is also an important part of Andie’s art practice with several trips to Iceland, Europe, Japan and throughout the United States.
Andie attended Washington State University and received a BFA in painting and sculpture in 1993.
Andie’s artwork is included in the collection’s of Redmond City Hall (Mayor’s Office), Seattle University, Washington State Art Consortium, Seattle Chinese Medical Center, CRS Financial Center, Seattle Center, the Pike Place Market Foundation and numerous private collections.
Artist Statement:
The word “urchin” has several meanings.
In one context, it refers to a sea urchin, a class of spiny echinoderm that is sometimes used in cuisine, and whose outer shell is often used decoratively. These sea creatures are voracious omnivores, and eating anything that crosses their path. They are capable of great feats of reproduction and can easily fill up an ecological niche if left unchecked by predators.
In another context, “urchin” is a Victorian term for an orphan, a child who has been cast off by society and relegated to a lifelong struggle of finding their place in society. The term was especially used for those who were considered to be misfits who didn’t belong.
In this work, the shape of a sea urchin has been used as the inspiration for a series of small containers, each one unique and ready to be adopted. In particular, they are meant to be used as outer containers for planter pots, particularly well-suited for succulents and other such orphans. Algorithmically “grown" in twinned pairs in a basement laboratory, each one has a name and a desire to take up space on a shelf or windowsill.
Artist Bio:
j. “fluffy” shagam is a nonbinary trans woman residing in White Center, Washington. As a former software engineer with a background in computer graphics and game development, she cherishes experimenting with many interdisciplinary forms, merging computation, 3D printing, ceramics, augmented reality, interaction, audio, video, and music. Her art and methods are heavily informed by her disability, neurodivergence, and love of creatures and coffee.
Artist Bio:
Jieyi Ludden Zhou 周杰意 is a queer and trans Chinese-American artist currently based in Shanghai, China. They hold an MFA in 4D art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They have shape-shifted through many mediums including: installation, murals, weaving, animation, watercolor, collage, batik, book making, pop-ups, paper making, sewing, and bamboo working. Their current practice is researching traditional Chinese folk art techniques, stories, and motifs, and incorporating them into contemporary art. They strive to create sustainable and low-waste artwork from primarily plant-based materials.
Artist Statement:
When I came to Shanghai this year, I’ve been learning for myself what the queer and trans community is like here. Shanghai, like Shenzhen, has a thriving queer and trans community. Some of it is very public, some of it is more underground. The school I work at includes sexual orientation and gender identity in their non-discrimination policy. There’s an out lesbian couple who are both teachers at my school. There is a longstanding lesbian bar in Shanghai and many gay bars. Trans-only spaces are rare, but the queer spaces put in effort to be trans-inclusive. In so many ways Shanghai surprised me and ended up being far more welcoming and open than I anticipated.
Since arriving in China, whenever we have teaching breaks, I have been traveling around China learning about Chinese intangible cultural heritage, folk arts, and the arts created by Chinese ethnic minorities. I went to Guizhou during the Christmas and New Years holiday to learn about Miao (Chinese Hmong), Dong, and Buyi ethnicity folks arts including needle and thread books, embroidery, paper making, and Batik. The latter part of my trip was spent deep diving into batik* at Ninghang Batik in Danzhai, Guizhou. The two batik pieces included in this show were completed during my winter residency at Ninghang.
Artist Bio:
Valeria Espinal (Val) is a non-binary queer mixed media artist born and working in Seattle, WA. Using micro-photography, painting, and collage, Val's work experiments with the boundaries of art while giving microscopy a new field of study. What may have once been sterile glass or a diagnostic test slide becomes a painting with a voice. Their pieces at the microscopic scale uncover the hidden life of paint as a medium, reveling in different angles of texture and transparency. At the macroscopic level, the work brings the human world and the microbial world together on a different style of picture plane. Val affectionately refers to their pieces as a kind of stained glass. They seek to nurture the relationship of art and science and humanity with the unseen sides of nature. The multitudinous forms of life and art is the lens through which Val navigates their identity as a transgender human, a fusion of queer ecology. Their work has been shown in Pipsqueak Gallery, Push/Pull and Center on Contemporary Art.
Artist Statement:
The human scale of vision has many biases and expectations. The smaller, microscopic scale has been a consistent comfort to me, and behind the microscope’s lens I could hide from what people wanted me to be and focus on nature and knowledge. Hiding didn’t last, of course, and science couldn’t provide every answer to the questions I had for myself. Through all the ways I had to shapeshift or put on one of hundreds of masks, somehow loving and pursuing art was more repressed in me than being non-binary and trans. Now I realize the endless pleasure of bringing art to where science roams. A more wholesome body of knowledge emerges. I believe in letting the totality of the world into my work. My pieces are an invitation to look somewhere else in the same place you’ve been. Combining scales of microbes and humans with realms of art and science yields valuable insights and countless perspectives. In my practice, there is just as much microbial figuration as there is human abstraction. A combine emerges from the flat picture planes of microscope slides and the rich textures of watercolors. Experimentation expands. While I respect and admire the important efforts of academically trained scientists, I urge every human to consider that most microbes in the world aren’t in a lab being studied or on a kitchen counter being wiped away.
Transgender people, like microbes, are vilified and misunderstood yet inherently natural and part of the flow of life. Both of us have been here longer than modern society. Microbes can never truly be wiped off the planet, nor can we. We adapt and evolve and give to the world our unique lessons. It is more important now than ever to explore the multitudes we contain. To prepare ourselves for the future, we must improve our relationship to all realms of life. The diversity of life includes the diversity of ourselves, and both deserve respect. It is no surprise to me that the fear of the next big plague or superbug is contemporaneous with the fear-mongering towards trans and non-binary people as a “social contagion.” To reduce fear with knowledge is how I stave off infectious hatred and turn to love instead. I invite you to focus on the joy of learning, whether it’s art or science or a small new way to do something huge.
Artist Bio:
Kitt Peacock is an artist-researcher from O’odham Jeweḍ, currently working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ nations. Their practice is centred around the creation and maintenance of trans worlds, and considers how violent conditions can be redeployed as the very material of trans life. Peacock’s current work with the Centre for Near Life Research forges alliances with non-living relations—contaminated waterways, lethal algae blooms, and sites of harm—in order to discover new strategies of community resistance.
They hold an MFA from the University of British Columbia (2023) and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2019). Their work has appeared in recent exhibitions at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Geffen Contemporary (Los Angeles), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.
Artist Bio:
Zane DeYoung (they/them) is a trans poet and visual artist from Snohomish, WA. Their work frequently centers around identity, memory, and violence set against the rural backdrop of their upbringing, and has been featured in Yours Truly Magazine, Manastash, and Stanza. They will receive their BA in English Language and Literature from Central Washington University this June, and will be pursuing their MFA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University in the fall. Film and film history continues to be a constant source of inspiration for them, and has provided the basis for much of their creative work. The pieces in this exhibition share some DNA with Friday the 13 th , I Saw the TV Glow, Cure, and the TV show The Curse. With this in mind, please consider following them on Letterboxd (zanedeyoung) and helping them pursue their dream of being “one of the good ones” on the most annoying app of all time.
Artist Statement:
When I think of taking up space, I think about how certain events have gained enough individual weight to make my mind lopsided. I am an avid photographer of uninteresting things. I’ve taken countless pictures of commercial buildings, empty parking lots, parked cars. Subjects that have little aesthetic or spiritual meaning to them. When I take pictures of people, they tend to be awkward; too stilted for good candid photography, not composed enough for portraits. My hard drive is full of this minutiae, the capture and collection of which could resemble obsession in the right light. Last summer, my brother and I caught a ferry to Whidbey Island, where we spent some of our childhood. I asked him to pose for a picture on the bow, with the sun in his eyes and a loud family clambering on the rail behind him. The tide was very far out, and several rowboats had been stranded on the beach where we disembarked. We wandered around a little, feeling apocalyptic. I took several more pictures, most of which were boring. We drove past our old house. Our conversations were about movies or music. Occasionally he would ask me if I remembered things like the name of a street or the old tire swing that used to hang in our front yard. Mostly I didn’t. We drove home. This was the last time we saw or talked to each other in any real sense; he moved overseas and I started transitioning. Both of these things, but especially the latter, have added miles to the distance of our relationship.
Taking Up Space is made possible with support from the Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture and 4Culture.
Artist Bio:
I’m Uma, a disabled artist, writer, and award winning game designer interested in animals, horror, and queer feminist literature. Everything I make is about some combination of love, grief, hallucination, and an excess of joy. With Belladonna Paloma I make video games about the divine and occult providence of transfemme existence. I live in Gateshead, UK.
Recent exhibition projects include "Hinterlands" at Baltic (Gateshead 2022), “The Joy of Destruction” for Backlit (Nottingham, 2023), and my first solo exhibition “Earth A.D.” co-commissioned by and touring across Wysing Arts Centre (Cambridge, 2022), FACT (Liverpool, 2023), and Quad (Derby, 2024). I am currently the 2024 International Digital Fellow at Quad, and a trustee for Broken Grey Wires, the Liverpool based art organisation concerned with the depiction of mental health illness.
Artist Statement:
Writing is embedded in my practice, featuring in my games and performances, as well as in published texts in their own right. I am particularly interested in the overlaps between theory, genre fiction / fan fiction / game manuals, and a specifically trans reading of Ecriture Feminine.
Artist Statement:
It is a pilgrimage to know yourself. To see who was, who is, who will be. Each form opens as if a gate I could wander into, their lights glittering in deep recesses. Memories of soft girlhood, a misplaced tomboy, the sultry vixen. Selves well travelled, tempting with their familiarity. Roads I walked easily, convincingly.
But one door looms, brighter and hotter than the rest. I peer at the opening, greeted by the unexpected - someone unknown and unseen. A self untouched by expectation and obligation, free of the manipulations of the hundreds of people who left their handprints on me so deeply I could no longer see how much of me was even of my own shape or making. I can barely stand to look at him with how brightly he burns, his hands leaving light everywhere he touches. His voice whispers magic in the dark, siren songs of sorcery I dreamed so desperately of.
First I ignore him, then I actively reject him. I do not know these roads, could not see my future - no matter how blurry she felt off in the distance, I could somewhat make out her shape. How I wish I could walk all paths at once, all facets intersecting simultaneously in impossible multiplicity. But the body cannot contain me fully - I must choose, there is only one path I can take.
Stepping past the gate, I grieve. Here hot sun burns on my cheeks, blinding in every direction. I buried her there among the clouds with my own two hands, muttering eulogies to every future me that would never come to be. Only in this new form with its new futures do I finally understand his magic, the choice to become a gift of self-actualization so powerful it frightens at first.
It is not enough for me to merely take up what space is given. Instead, I split the sky into sanctums of my own, endless and expansive. I gleam with such intensity that to capture me is to glimpse the ever-changing sun, power buried so deeply that I did not know the depths of my multitudes until I finally made the journey wandering the space between what I thought I was and who I truly wanted. Becoming is my alchemy, of existing as many and all and none all at once until the elixir of self tastes just right for the day, the year, the decade.
Artist Bio:
Jay Stoneking is a queer, mixed Vietnamese-American visual artist and graphic novelist based in Seattle. Primarily self-taught, his creative practice touches traditional and digital mediums, design, and storytelling.
Raised a young girl in his immigrant, Vietnamese family, Jay draws deeply from his complicated relationship living between cultures and genders. He uses the physical ritual of creation to channel his love for magic and mysticism, weaving his own flavor of fantasy into art inspired by his mixed heritage and his journey to self-discovery.
Since starting his professional arts career in 2022, Jay has exhibited at galleries around Seattle, including Fathom Gallery, The Vestibule, Gallery110, and the Center on Contemporary Arts. He was awarded two temporary public art installations through Shunpike's Seattle Restored program, followed by a six month residency at the Seattle Restored Interactive Art Studio in downtown Seattle. His debut graphic novel, The Unbound Arcana, is an ongoing self-published digital series.