Sculpt me like one of ur trans girls - Part 1
A look at Mil Veces un Instante (A thousand times an Instant)
CW: Transmisogyny, Murder
Caveat: This is just my feelings on this, this is not prescribing how u should feel i just wanna unpack and talk about it
I saw a video this morning (the morning of starting writing this) of trans ppl reacting to the new sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in London. The video involved some odd reactions that I found kinda jarring.
theyfabs bouncing and being joyous at the sculpture and saying they feel so represented. What could be wrong about that?
Well let me unpack that here for u all to see.
oh sister where ART tho
The Sculpture is called Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times An Instant) and it is by cisgender artist Teresa Margolles. It consists of plaster casts of the faces of 726 trans and non-binary ppl from Mexico as well as some from the UK.
The plaster was applied directly to ppls faces so they have bits of ppls skin and hair and other DNA fragments. The applying of the plaster was important to the work as it allowed for time to talk to each person and learn of their experiences and stories.
You exist in the CONTEXT
Them there plaster face masks are inspired by death masks and the tzompantli - native mexican rack that would display skulls in the same manner as this sculpture.It was used at least as far back as 600 CE to display the skulls of sacrifices or war captives.
This all also link back to the first time the artist ever saw a trans woman while working in a morgue as a forensic scientist, which is fuckin wild. Margolles was quoted as saying “Their fingernails were destroyed as they fought for their lives”.
She also has said that when she was given the Fourth Plinth commission her first thought was to make a tribute to her friend Karla who was a trans woman who was murdered in 2015 at the age of 64. Karla had lived a full life as an actress, folk singer and sex worker, but sadly was killed before her photography collaboration with Margolles opened in Germany and so instead of the 10 photographs planned, there was 9 and Karla’s death certificate.
Her murder is still unsolved almost a decade later!
The vast majority of this context isn’t given on the Mayor of London’s website (cuz why the fuck would they) which I believe has the official page for the Fourth Plinth and if you want to find out anything beyond the surface level of just what the artwork is then you have to follow a link to download an app which most ppl cba to do init
According to NovaraMedia (the only place that really gives the full context from what i can find) says that getting plaster casts of faces in the UK (I asked the Mayor of London’s office which trans groups ‘across the UK’ were involved and they couldn’t tell me, so i think its safe to assume it was largely ppl who live and/or work in London as the main orgs they worked with are bade in London and i haven’t heard of them coming up to Yorkshire to do any face casting!) was easy compared to doing it in Mexico - its a pretty dangerous place to be a trans woman. She had to make sure her studio could double as a sleeping space for when it got past a certain time as it wouldn’t have been safe for them to walk home at night. She also laid out breakfasts, lunches and dinners as well as created playlists of ppls fav tunes to help create a space they could feel comfortable in, but before that she had to find ppl who might be even slightly willing to do it and give them assurances that she would do what she could to make it as safe as possible for them
All that makes safer spaces policies in the UK seem like fuckin napkins by comparison!
Backlash Mountain
Ok lets make this quick cuz i don’t wanna spend more time on the gammons than i have too
GB News made a false claim that Sadiq Khan had blocked putting up a statue of Big Liz 2 up in favour of this sculpture, which is definitely not true. They also stoked the culture war by hyping up how much of public money is going on this sculpture
They are acting like this is a new thing. That plinth has been in use since 1998 with a revolving door of public sculpture on it. Thats 26 years!
While GB News does have their figures correct, I had to go searching for that info cuz they obvs cba to provide sources cuz they are creeps
What they also don’t mention is that the sculpture hadn’t been approved at the point the mayor had put the funding bid in. So the amounts they whine about would have been spent on any sculpture and the backlash is just cuz its about trans ppl
The Daily Mail is oddly not as rabid as they usually are over things like this and actually provide plenty of context, so much so this almost could pass as a piece of journalism (almost but lets not give them too much credit ay)
Lets circle back…
Anyway it irked me a bit seeing joyous reactions to smth that I knew was supposed to be actually kinda sombre. Like yes it can be both but damn i’m not gonna sit and say i feel seen or represented by this sculpture cuz i am not, even if some of the faces in it are from the UK. I’m finding other trans ppls reactions to it almost as exhausting as the transphobes reactions to it and its taken me a while to understand it.
The Trans JoyTM (see ignorant positivity/toxic positivity) of it all is about the Trans CommunityTM as a big nebulous thing with theyfabs saying they feel represented (altho i have only seen trans women mentioning that they are in it), but the negative vibes are largely about trans women. While the right wing news outlets aren’t specifically saying trans women, lets face it when they say ‘trans sex workers’ they are gonna think of transphobic stereotypes & propaganda of trans women.
Some articles also contain things like “The piece features personal touches, including lipstick smears and false eyelashes visible on some masks”.
So we start to get shuffled to the side to make room for everyone else the minute smth positive happens but they don’t seem to wanna join in the negative.
The first trans person the artist ever saw was a dead trans woman. Not any other flavour of transness.
The artist has been working to memorialise a dead trans woman. Not any other flavour of transness.
So how has this happened? (the phenomenon around the sculpture, not mass murder of trans women)
Well I think the abstractness of it may have contributed to this - the casts are the faces of individuals, but they are arranged into a cube and become a mass which makes it much easier to make it about the Trans CommunityTM and make its mssg whatever u want, so its easier to push the thought of trans women being murdered to the side while bouncing about talking about Trans JoyTM.
How many trans women sex workers in mexico will be murdered before their face casting disintegrates or gets taken down?
The artist has said that part of the sculpture is to bring the trans community together as if to hug her dead friend Karla. That naturally comes with some joy as does mexican ways of celebrating the life of a person who has died. That all gets lost for me when Trans JoyTM takes over and none of the somberness that a sculpture that is about the death of trans sex workers should come with.
So. Lets take the gammons suggestions of proppa bri’ish artists makin proppa bri’ish statue cast in bronze in the victoriana style of Brianna Ghey. How much Trans Joy would there be about a public sculpture that directly visually communicated grief about a murdered teenage trans girl?
I know, I know I complain about visual communication a lot in my writing but it is an important thing imo
maybe i’m just a bloody auld mizer but i don’t see the Trans JoyTM in this sculpture. I like it quite a lot actually, but not cuz i feel represented as a trans woman ex-sex worker, but cuz its a piece of art that makes me think about what i want to see in a trans monument, cuz thats what this is
It is a monument for our times, depicting the disparity and death of trans women and if that feels depressing then its cuz it is and i’m ok with that.
Perhaps we need a bit more scope so tune in next month when i will look at the Ribbons public sculpture in Leeds and how trans women are represented in that