Printed by Teal Pansy
Materials: black ink, Iridescent pigment, Archival Quality
Width: 8 inches Height: 10 inches
From the creators:
This piece, No Binaries No Boxes, is about the ways that research (and society in general) often ask us information about our genders, without involving us in deciding how those questions are asked or what the answers are. This topic was discussed in the presentation by Mike Smith (from the AIDS Committee of Toronto) at the Summit 2022 Conference, where there was discussion of how gender might be inquired about to be more inclusive of trans and gender-diverse people.
This art piece literally declares “no binaries no boxes” in reference to gender not being a pre-determined binary, and no boxes meaning that I/we don’t want to be put in a box – and also in reference to the tick boxes we are asked to check on forms or on research to ascribe a word to our genders.
Cis man
Cis woman
Transgender man
Transgender woman
Non-binary
I didn’t leave one box to go into another
This piece challenges us to think beyond binary notions of gender as a society, and also to recognize the ways that sometimes even within 2SLGBTQIA+ community research we continue to put ourselves and our communities in boxes. Perhaps we as communities can disrupt normative ways of conducting research and relating to our communities, and create new ways of being that embody the diversity and ingenuity of the communities we come from.
Leopard slugs, to me, are iconic and embody so much of queer culture. From their fashion to their intertwined iridescent phalluses locked in an embrace of mutual pleasure and genetic information exchange, they are very queer creatures. Their mating ritual is beautiful, surprising, and transcends what many of us believed possible. They exist in their natural habitat in this print with mushrooms and ferns – equally fascinating fungi and flora.
This is for an original linocut print. Prints are numbered and the first printing is an edition of 35