Jo, “Celebrated”

Now is a difficult time for transgender people. From the current president’s attacks on what he calls “transgender ideology” and the “sexual mutilation of our youth” on the federal level, to HB 257’s ban on trans people’s ability to use restrooms of their choosing in Utah’s government-owned buildings, it’s not difficult to find reasons to be pessimistic. Intentionally or not, the artworks at the Transgender Celebration 2025 exhibition ask whether we should, or how we can, celebrate transgender people and their rights given the suffering and uncertainty that is taking place now. The works range from Jo’s cake sculpture titled “Celebrated,” bearing the colors of the non-binary pride flag, to Bryten Checketts’ “The Choice,” a framed statement that describes his difficult decision to come out even though he had been taught this path in life led to “inevitable damnation.” There’s a tension here between simple, positive work and pieces that acknowledge current problems.

The exhibition, which is open in the Salt Lake City Public Library’s Lower Urban Room until April 20, is a group show of artists who are all presumably transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming. As the curation’s intent was to celebrate during the period when the Trans Day of Visibility would occur on March 31, it’s significant that many of the contributing artists on display aren’t clearly established figures in the fine art world—this gives otherwise lesser known transgender individuals the opportunity to be seen and heard in a time when the state and federal governments are attempting to suppress them in numerous ways.

Willow Skye-Biggs, here represented by a short film, is perhaps the most established artist in the group, as some of her video art pieces have been recognized by organizations like the Seattle Trans Film Festival. “Vapor Trails” is a slightly ambiguous piece. What can be clearly understood about the story is that while Iris and Clara lay in a tent together, Iris questions whether Clara is real but is grateful for their presence, and the pair kiss after touching a glowing blue cube. Soft ambient music plays throughout the kissing scene while the camera slowly spins, and then there’s a refreshing shot of Iris with wind blowing through their hair as they stick their head out of a moving vehicle. After this, Iris gets out of the tent alone, and while they’re sitting quietly, a UFO appears in the sky. For some reason, they then begin laughing for a moment and rolling on the ground before the energy dies back down into quiet with a shot of a concerned, reflective look on Iris’ face.

Still from Willow Skye-Biggs’ “Vapor Trails.”

The film appears intentionally open to interpretation, although the dialogue and its presence in a transgender exhibition offers some clues. Taken literally, perhaps Iris knows they experience hallucinations, which would explain their question to Clara, “Are you real?” and their saying, “I think I can see you.” Additionally, this could explain the glowing cube and the UFO. By this reasoning, Iris may have been laughing in disbelief at the UFO as a hallucination. Beyond this literal possibility, however, Iris can be read as interacting with a dream of an ideal lover, or—more fitting to the transgender theme—an ideal version of their own queer self. This latter interpretation fits with the question, “Do you want to be me?” and taking it further, the lines “If you are real, that means I could lose you,” and “Then I can be a dream. Dreams last forever,” represents Iris’ uncertainty about enacting and embodying their ideal.

This relationship to an ideal possibility feels distanced and trapped, like the unheard melody in John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”—because the musician was too afraid of the flaws that would be inevitable through performance, the melody is kept perfect in an imaginary realm. It’s useful to also compare this to the writing of the queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz, who treats queerness as a future ideal or utopia, stating that, “Queerness is not yet here … Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house.” There’s a reversal here where instead of ideals trapped in imagination, we can be trapped in a material here and now. Relevant to Clara’s declaration of themself as a dream, Muñoz specifically discusses daydreaming as well, saying that the philosopher Ernst Bloch, who influenced his work, “…values daydreaming and sees it doing the work of imaging another life, another time, another place—a version of heaven on earth that is not simply denial or distraction…” The invocation of dreaming in “Vapor Trails” may similarly create a space for Iris or the viewer to imagine how their desires could be enacted if the forces of suppression in the material world are restructured. The secure, isolated space of the tent allows Iris to step away from a heteronormative and cisnormative world. On the other hand, Iris may not be ready to enact this possibility, making the act of dreaming more of an escape, and perhaps making the UFO that appears in the sky a metaphor for what is perceived to be the laughable absurdity of their ideas. In the context of a “Transgender Celebration,” the interpretation above is challenging. The dream sequence of Iris kissing Clara has a peaceful feeling, and yet the film’s end, with the dying of Iris’ laughter, can leave behind uncertainty.

Nico Grey’s “Dick and Jane” adds to this discussion with the image of a Dick and Jane illustration painted onto bubble wrap. The artist’s statement here uses Dick and Jane as representatives of old, solidified gender norms that have been taught over time, and compares our responses to gender with bubble wrap because, “…people are irresistibly drawn towards it, like it with sharp distinct edges, but also poke at it; the more one touches gender, the softer its edges get, but that’s why and how people are loved as they become individualized and familiar.” Ironically, there is a “Do not touch the art” sign just to the right of the painting. The metaphor may be a strong one, the intention may be to say we should pop gender’s bubbles; and yet we are stuck with an unfinished, deconstructive project. Deconstruction on its own is already very present-focused as it takes structures that already exist and pokes at them rather than inventing something new. It feels as though instead of creating new visions, we’re still deconstructing in the quagmire of the present.

Nico Grey, “Dick and Jane”

But where could we celebrate besides in the present? Dreams and daydreams may offer an “experience” outside of usual time and space, but these experiences necessarily take place in the material world. And this world is a challenging, often unsatisfying one, “a prison house,” even. Jo’s installation piece “Bleeding, But Still Non-Binary” reflects this in an immediate, bodily way with a display of menstrual pads decorated with the pronouns they/them. Periods can provoke gender dysphoria for many trans and non-binary people who experience them, so this can be a difficult reality to acknowledge while still asserting their identities. There’s a strong similarity between the they/them pads and an Andy Warhol artwork discussed by Muñoz—a Coca-Cola bottle with a flower growing out of it. “The Coke bottle is the everyday material…” Muñoz writes. “But for Warhol… the utopian exists in the everyday, and through an aesthetic practice that I am calling queer, the aesthetic endeavor that reveals the inherent utopian possibility always in the horizon.” Like Warhol’s Coke flowers, “Bleeding, But Still Non-Binary” presents us with both everyday, present realities in the form of the pads, and a dedication to a still growing flower through the reassertion of gender-neutral pronouns.

Our celebrations of current accomplishments and future possibilities can’t ring true unless there’s space to acknowledge difficult past and present realities. While transgender people are continual objects of oppression, while they still bleed in a broader, more metaphorical sense, queer celebrations are necessarily utopian assertions. We can choose to say to our dreams as Iris does, to Warhol’s growing flower, “It is good that I found you in this world. I was hiding in ruins. Now I can float again.”

Detail of Jo’s “Bleeding, But Still Non-Binary.”

Transgender Celebration 2025, Salt Lake City Public Library, Salt Lake City, through April 20.
Participating artists:

All images courtesy of the author.

David Blanchard

David Blanchard is an artist from Tooele, Utah, who graduated Summa Cum Laude from Utah Valley University with a BFA in Painting and Drawing. Beyond their surrealist oil paintings, they have begun an adventure into the realm of art writing.