● ● ● 2023

The Angels Speak In Binary, 2023

Canvas, house paint, wax, found crosses, wooden wheel, and wiring

The Angels Speak in Binary was a work painted with the prompt to create a work in a single colour and to interact with the colour on a deeper level. My initial challenge was wanting to work specifically with a cool colour, a palette often neglected in my body of work. I chose blue, a colour I knew was historically associated with the Virgin Mary but is also heavily utilised in branding, specifically technology branding. Blue brings a sense of calm and peace, creates an air of loyalty and dependability, and evokes the infinite wisdom of the Virgin Mother. Blue is also a colour historically intertwined with France's faith and heraldry.

These rich meanings and historical importance began to paint to me the figure of Saint Jeanne d'Arc, the patron of France and icon of divine guidance. The sixteen-year-old warrior was famous for her visions of God, which she claimed led to her swift victory. She was also infamous for her transcendence of gender roles by choosing to wear male armour. This infamy led to the church turning on the maid once victory was secured; the whispers of ‘a girl guided by God’ became cries of a witch. Jeanne was famously burned at the stake at just nineteen in 1431, stripped bare of her armour to humiliate her. When told her fate, the Maiden’s only request when she died was to view a cross; one was made for her from sticks, and she was allowed to embrace it before her hands were bound. La Pacuelle, Saint Jeanne d’Arc, was simultaneously humiliated and venerated in her life; she was granted titles and victories yet was imprisoned and met with threats of assault by the men around her. She was allowed last rites and yet burned a heretic. Women in history are often polarising; figures turned into saints and sinners when written by men. Jeanne was no different. I chose to venerate Jeanne in my way, combining famous depictions of her and my modern sensibility.

Despite the flames, she was famously forced to face nude, I portrayed her in her armour, painted from house paint and coated in beeswax. Her hair is short but not shaven clean, speaking to her masculine role as a warrior. Gloss is added to her lips and eyes, creating tears and shine, and she looks upwards towards the heavens, caught in prayer.

Above her floats a wooden wheel, painted gold and inscribed with a passage from “Le Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc”, composed in 1429 by female poet Christine de Pizan, the first poem written about the Maid of Orleans. The wheel references early depictions of saints and holy people in Byzantine art with halos. The crosses of gold on either side of the maiden represent not only the two crucifixes she was allowed before her execution but also the holy voices she heard. The girl receives her holy word through modern technology, headphones around her ears, attached to the crosses and heaven above via snaking wires. Jeanne d’Arc is a figure that I venerate in my art and my daily life; feeling a deep connection to the young woman fighting under the guidance of the divine and transcending every role expected of her.

She wore men’s clothes, she fought, and she led armies during a time when she was expected to sit still.

The maiden warrior heard the voices of angels and knew that now was the time for action.

Injection Number Infinite, 2023

Recorded performance art created with camera, subject, syringe, testosterone, added soundscape

Injection Number Infinite is a work that began with my struggle with my choice to enter the art education program and my transgender identity. The term transgender had started appearing more and more in headlines for one distinct reason: the accessibility of restrooms matching self-identified gender. Suddenly, the act of peeing in a bathroom was an act of radical protest, let alone the act of entering the classroom to educate. Simple acts had become political due to an identity I cannot change, and reflecting on the simple act of my weekly injection allowed me to find my performance. I chose to record myself doing an action that was mundane to me–injecting my testosterone–an act considered radical and even dangerous by others. I was performing a mundane action that left me stripped bare metaphorically and literally, revealing my identity and form to my audience. This vulnerability, openness, and the current political climate produced my performance, leaving no need for scripting the mundane.

The work was submitted initially with the raw audio but was completed one year later with the addition of a soundscape. The audio-scape was produced in a later retrospective, reflecting on my bodily and emotional changes a year later. The audio was created with introspection on the infinite nature of my identity: an injection I did a year ago is no different from one I do in the present, only I change. The audio took the bones of a sound-scape produced around the same time as the initial performance and was dubbed over with a church choir from Brussels, a church I was lucky to visit and a reading of King James’ translation of Genesis, the Bible's first book.

I chose the first readings from the Bible to reflect on how the injection I am performing could be the very first or the very last–there is no visual difference. It speaks towards my feelings of created divinity by having autonomy over my body and its hormonal composition. I also chose to cut the video abruptly at the very end, allowing the final testosterone bottle never to fall, as my final injection has yet to occur. The transformation of my body is infinite–no end in sight. Injection Number Infinite is a fraction of the mundane yet intimate nature of transformation and the radical nature of controlling one's body on a hormonal nature.

It is both performance and prayer towards the divine and reclamation of self.