ARTISTS STATEMENT
To become a mother is an act of vulnerability; so too is the process of transition for a trans woman. In the midst of these raw moments loom the cultural myths shaped by idealized womanhood and its contrasting shadow the “monstrous” woman. Misogyny defines women by their ability to bear children as well as elevating their existential capacity for love and care. Many cultures throughout human history have reduced women to three tropes, the maiden, the matron and the hag. The matron, or the idealized mother, ostensibly elevates women to a role that in real life can never be achieved while the purest maiden earns the right to serve as a vessel to become the matron. The monstrous hag is the failed matron. This gives cis women one path to validity and leaves trans women no way to be perceived as legitimate women. For the cis woman who has “achieved” pregnancy and childbirth the weight of idealized motherhood can be crushing. For many trans women the process of transition means confronting disgust and rejection on the faces of strangers and loved ones. Simply being themselves conjures the deeply feared monstrous woman, the thing of shame and shadow that tramples on sacred womanhood. Our work wrestles with the way these stories are embedded in our own bodies coloring the way we view ourselves. Perhaps, by playfully depicting the specters that haunt us we can exorcise their presence, clearing space for vulnerability to be a place of human connection.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
The Danaid Collaboration (DanaidX) is a Baltimore based duo formed by Hope Brooks and Angela Yarian. Yarian spent 10 years unable to make work because of a debilitating illness, despite holding a degree in art. Likewise, Brooks, a trans woman, photographer and data scientist, also wrestles with her own chronic pain issues. Emerging from a quest to make art from a place that acknowledges present realities, their collaboration resists trying to be more abled-bodies than they are. Through an attentive, slow-moving method of making cyanotypes, they embrace limitations as a fertile ground for creative work, and as a possibility for expanding the dialogue on what constitutes a successful art practice and life. DanaidX’s name comes from the Greek myth about the danaid sisters, cursed by the gods to endlessly fill a cistern riddled with holes. Chronic illness makes simple tasks into broken cisterns. DanaidX asks: what if we were able to plug those holes for each other?
© DanaidX Collaboration