ARTIST STATEMENT
This series of portraits of trans-masc individuals is printed in the subject’s own serous fluid, collected while in recovery from gender affirming top surgery. Serous fluid is within all of us, lining the spaces between our internal organs. Upon experiencing a physical trauma, this fluid swells up to protect the body. The long process of undergoing gender affirming surgery – from researching surgeons to initial consultations to recovery – is deeply entrenched in mutual aid among trans people. We care for one another, talk through our experiences with the medical industrial complex, feed each other, change each other’s bandages, and measure the fluid draining out of our wounds. It is through transition that we find ourselves and each other. Similarly, this body of work could only have been made with the help of my trans community.
I photograph each individual in the comfort of their own homes, or another space in which they feel able to freely express themselves. During this session, I ask them questions about their experiences in their bodies and, paying close attention to their body language and gestures, I compose the images.
The prints are made by close friend and artist, August Schultz, who was my caretaker following top surgery. This series is ongoing.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Eso Malflor (b.1994) is a first-generation Mexican-Norwegian-American artist from Houston, Texas. They work across a range of media to explore relationships between the human body and the earth body through a trans-lens; transsexual, transformative, transitional, trans-national, and transitory. Engaging with primarily natural elements and materials, they work to collapse the space in between what we regard as ‘human nature’ and ’nature.’
Solo exhibitions include The Earth is a Body in Transition at HAIR+NAILS, In Tending To at the pH Gallery, But the Skin of the Earth is Seamless at HAIR+NAILS, and A Complex Desire at Sure Space. They have been an artist-in-residence at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, The Medium Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and Vermont Studio Center. Their work is in the collections of the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, as well as private collections across the US.
ESO received their BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2016 and is now based in Chicago, Illinois and Kjerringøy, Norway.
© Eso Malflor