Art Pieces

To Be Alive by Jenna-Hope Dumaual

"In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity," - Erik Erikson. The discovery of identity is volatile in nature and is difficult to establish when faced with social restrictions. The world is not fit for all, forcing many to fight for their lives or admit defeat and conform to the rules. So, what does it mean to be alive with identity, when life can be taken from its purest expression? What does it mean to be alive if you're not living the identity you propose to be? What does it mean to be alive if you can’t live the identity you wish to be?

To Be Alive.pdf

Walking with Confusion by Jenna-Hope Dumaual

These shoes were created for me to express my sorrow and anger for the confusion I felt towards both my gender, sexuality, identity, and the ability to feel human. The colorful shoe expresses the anger I have for being lost, confused, and not being able to feel "human" as everyone else does. The black and white shoe expresses the remorse and sorrow I have for not being able to express my identity and feel "human." To be human means to have an established identity, so the shoes discuss the struggle and pain for when an individual can't come to any conclusion.

Stink Tuna by Alexis Wana

"Stink Tuna" is my own ponderings about the treatment of women. More often than not, women have been the essential center in many communities. Why, then, are women pushed to the side in favor of their male peers? The phrase "stink tuna" is a phrase often used to question the smell of a woman's vagina. No matter the achievements, merit, or money, women will be reduced to the value and sexualization of their bodies.

Blessed Stones of the Land by Alexis Wana

These four cups are make with recycled stoneware, and painted with underglaze. I was inspired by Kaulana Na pua, the lyrics "Ua lawa mākou i ka pōhaku, I ka ʻai kamahaʻo o ka āina.” To be satisfied with the stones of the land, rather than give up their loyalty to Hawaiʻi. To persist in the face of colonization is the ultimate show of aloha.

Struggle by TBP

Struggle is a piece formed off of the struggle and battle that I've had with my spine. The hardware that saved my life from keeping my spine from compressing my heart also feels like spikes keeping me from being able to move my back the way I'd like due to pain. I tried to embody that restrictive feeling I feel with my back into this piece.

Queer as Embodied Ambiguity by Gryffo (Instagram: gryffothegryffiyn)

My writing draws on my emotions with personal, raw experience analyzed through feminist lenses such as intersectionality. My inspiration draws from feminist scholars such as Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Maya Mikdashi, Sarah Ihmoud and so many more. Through my writing, I examine the ties that make up my inner discourses between my various identities of queer, multiracial, Christian by association, practitioner of Diwatahan, American, and a settler in Hawaiʻi. With the intention to draw upon my emotions and personal experience, I hope to evoke emotion in readers to encourage self-reflection on their unique positionality.

Queer as embodied ambiguity - Kris R.pdf

Degenerative by Parker Amram Breman

Degenerative is a body horror piece that reflects what a flare up feels like for my neck and spine injuries. The pain is represented by physical gore (red), bursting out of my back and neck. The rest of my body is held together by medical stitches, an effort to repress the full body pain that typically accompanies a severe flare up.

Degenerative.pdf

Pasture Epistolaries by Parker Amram Breman

An epistolary is a poem that is written in the form of a letter.

The first letter uses death and rebirth as an analogy for the cycle of my chronic pain: better in the morning, slowly degrading into flare ups at night, only to be reset in the morning ad infinitum.

The second letter is set after the first chronologically, and shows how positive relationships can be used to motivate self growth. This drive is powerful, and something that can translate into healing.

pasture epistolaries.pdf

This Place by Parker Amram Breman

This place' is a reflection on real experiences with real people earlier in my disability journey. I was still getting used to being in a wheelchair in public, and it was at a stage in my life where most people saw me as a woman. This piece explores the intersection of those two experiences, the quiet solidarity among physically disabled folks, and the hostility of doors, sidewalks, and public areas that are only designed with able-bodied people in mind.

this place.pdf

Elegance in Exile by Participant #10

This piece explores my experience and what it means to live as an outcast and to slowly learn that being different is not just a flaw, but a form of beauty. I used a moth to help express a piece of uniqueness; moths are less likely to be noticed or wanted within a crowd of monarch butterflies—they are unnoticed at first glance despite being full of intricate patterns and textures that reveal a much deeper level of closeness.

Out of My Mind by Participant #11

A visual ode to the emotional complexity, deepened grief, and aftermath that comes with growing up in a system neurodivergent and sensitive. An older brother’s artistic depiction, meaningfully encapsulating his younger sister’s internal childhood experiences. He portrays the depressive becoming of what was supposed to be accommodated as the harbinger of holistic curiosity among all differences. Each stroke of charcoal contrasts with colors of what is viewed as whole and true. The heartached body is washed with layers of the past, cradling the specimen that became the number one source of self-inadequacy, depression, and scrutiny from the wider world. It evokes the complex relationship that one can have with neurodiversity, the juxtaposing truths that exist within it.

Art1_JoeyK.pdf

Human Sadness by Corpeski

The title of this piece was inspired by that of a song by experimental alt band The Voidz called Human Sadness. Assigned to the artwork after it was finished, this title is meant to highlight the inherent beauty of being a human being who has something one cares enough about to feel sad for. The contour of the nondescript figure in the artwork is unfinished and ostensibly melting, crying, or ruined, and that is exactly what makes its existence so beautiful. It comes in part from the isolating experience of being non-binary and feeling as if one does not fit the purported mold that most others appear to made from. Walking in one’s own skin when non-binary can feel like a challenge or task to be achieved, rather than something inherently welcome in society like cisgender expression. The unfinished or broken contour of the figure could represent feeling as if one’s failed that challenge or will never complete such a task.

The Cyclopean Motif by Corpeski

Born of happy accidents and vague intentions to outline a sitting figure, The Cyclopean Motif comes from a place of loving curiosity in me. The murky white character wears a crown and sits invitingly before you (should you choose to see them this way), watching you more intently than you ever have been in your life with a larger, more scribbly, and hungrier eye than you’ve ever seen before. It is unconcerned with the gender identity you claim and hold dear; you will display delicious masculinity and femininity before them no matter what you identify with, what foot you put forward, or what you attempt to conceal. The cyclopean character will see into the true duality of you all the same... or so the artist likes to project into the artwork looking back at them.

Big Mean Man by Corpeski

I don’t understand why this piece is so angry. So overbearing and domineering. It wasn’t my initial intention to make it this way, but once the lines were laying and working in one color and form, the next demanded to match it. Now my artwork reminds me of people who have towered over me as a child, needing to exercise physical dominance in order to ensure their misplaced, sadistic, or manipulative words were thoroughly listened to. This stance is a warning before potential physical violence, cruel judgement, or other forms of aggression that some feel empowered to use from within the safety net of a queerphobic society. This character lives in everyone, and I spend much time contemplating when and from whom I am going to see them again. Will we ever be safe? Does it matter, while we become stronger each time our resolve against hate is so harshly tested?

Hide Me by Corpeski

Coming out as bi was a funny joke to me. I never put much thought into the ramifications of my close friends and family knowing when I told them. Over several years after realizing and coming into my bisexuality, a primal fear arose bit by bit within me as little stories of homophobic violence piled up until I finally realized that being caught with the wrong person in the wrong situation could really mean becoming a target for violence or even murderous intentions. It is hard to stick to our guns once we know who we are when we can choose to stick predominantly to the opposite sex and avoid the perceived risk of death. I think this piece came from a place of fear for being one’s self. Hiding from things will save your life, but the dark of the closet will smother your life force if you are not careful.

Many Rivers of Tears for the Dead by Corpeski

I have always been a very strong empath, easily imagining the experience of individuals, groups of peoples, animals, and maybe even the whole combined organism of the world. The queer community in particular has lost so many lives, so many tears, and so much blood at the hands of the families and communities that were supposed to love them. Slaves suffered and endured together, most often. Native tribes across the world fought colonization side by side with one another. Daughters suffer alongside their mothers and siblings when fate places them under the thumb of a cruel father. But someone must weep for those who never found their tribe before suicidal despair or great violence consumed them in their great isolation. This piece and its title come from a need to release all this energy that builds up under the curse of overbearing empathy—even for those who are no longer alive to suffer man’s cruelty any further.

A Seat and a Vision by Mia Kessler

This piece illuminates the balancing act between pain and resolution, two things that varied chronically/terminally ill people manage everyday while making a perception of themselves. The woman’s former self endured an onset of delusions after the shock of a new rare disease that almost took her life. The pink figure is a handcrafted “delusion” to show her past self what her future would become. As struggle and sorrow are a prospering reality, she can display her parts as something wider than how she has been perceived or stigmatized, something that seemed unattainable when first hospitalized. Illness resilience can be limb-breakingly dismantling, but also inevitably true enough to leak more holistic complexities that lie within it. There is an unspoken truth in the community about waking up everyday to simply live while cyclically re-accepting every harder or scary thing in between.

Art1_MiaK.pdf

Burnout Sucks by Avalon Paradea

Living in a persistent state of burnout has been a life-changing experience for me. This zine briefly explores the challenges I have faced leading up to and during a mental breakdown, and the subsequent burnout that followed. Hereʻs to resting as I can, cherishing the support provided by loved ones, and finding inspiration to keep going.

Burnout zine full.pdf

Specimen by An Wirth-Yap

Being autistic and trans makes me feel like a science project. I am constantly explaining my existence to doctors, friends, entitled strangers and anyone else who pokes and prods enough. I feel like a specimen, not a person. I am a huge fan of science, especially of sea stars and similar animals. The sea star is a bat star, a species recently coming back from an epidemic with similar mechanisms to HIV. I love science, but also feel its fragility and the harm it has caused. My personal definition of queer and disabled is anything that goes against the construct of biology. Biology is not how life works, it’s just the language developed to describe life. Yet, biology is weaponized against queer people as a supposed beacon of answers.

My Autism Speaks and It Has Never Shut Up by An Wirth-Yap

When people try to understand autism as something that needs an answer, what it actually is gets extremely obscured. The public figures who are currently very vocal about finding an answer to autism, would probably not even recognize me (someone with a job, who has a partner and doesn’t live at home) as autistic. However the more medium and high support needs autistic people I meet, the more similarities I realize we have. This is a self portrait I cut into puzzle pieces and incorrectly reassembled. What is no longer visible are: my arms in a t-Rex pose (common autistic posture), my trans symbol sea urchin tattoo (because I am transgender and have an echinoderm special interest), my painted nails (I have a nail art special interest), and my top surgery scars.

Florida by An Wirth-Yap

I love Florida. I grew up going there a lot and still have a lot of family there. Florida does not love me because I am transgender. When I think of Florida, I think about the vibrant Jamaican community there, and eating fantastic food with my Jamaican family. When I mention wanting to go to Florida to my trans friends, I am met with terror and shock. It makes me feel sad when the horrific Floridian transphobia is the only thing people see. Someone left a map of Florida in my apartment building, and it stayed there for days because it is Florida so nobody wanted it. I took the map out and marked a bunch of Jamaican/Caribbean restaurants in Florida. I put it back into the frame and painted a green (reference to the Jamaican flag) transgender body over the plastic covering.

The Unseen War by Jennifer Press

This is a self-portrait detailing the war fought against Fibromyalgia. The searing red and yellow gradient reflects the body’s constant internal "fire" and inflammation. Outwardly composed, the figure attempts to work at a desk. The collapse—head in hands, a single tear—reveals the immense, invisible labor of maintaining function. Electrical sparks around the head symbolize the neuropathic pain and fibro fog. Text like "Help me" and "Nobody understands" expose the despair of this private, painful battle fought daily against an unseen enemy.

Ick's Day or You Fae by Spitfire Hummingbird

You ever find yourself surrounded by a buncha dicks that you could really do without? Sometimes you may even realize it's your own doing... It's time to look ourselves straight in the eye and think about that.

Got Wood? by Spitfire Hummingbird

Let it sink in that these are rough and unglazed, not just because they were made to resemble a tree, but also because the disabled artist lost critical days to a 5 day flare during the creation process, and kiln time waits for none. But as with all things, one must roll with one's limitations – better yet, use them to make a statement... Or perhaps just ask The Question: WHY THE FUCK IS EVERYTHING SO HARD?

Social Exclusion by Mx

This piece was inspired by a removed perspective of social networks, and the understandable preference of connecting with similar others. As multifaceted humans, we have the beautiful opportunity to find similarly unique arrays of colors in the spaces we feel at home in, and occasionally find a spark of connection across various worlds. For neurodivergent folks who contain “too many” colors – interests, hobbies, uncommon experiences, hopes, dreams, opinions, passions, life – inclusion can often be temporary. From the vibes being off to targeted exclusion, finding community is a sought after joy, appreciated as it comes and goes.

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