Why I Want to Study Fine Art at BA Level

I'm currently rewriting this admission essay at 1 AM the night before it's due. I had written something about my art being about Absurdist philosophy, but this is a lie. My art comes from my experience as a transfeminine person. I make work predominantly about the visceral bodily experience of being transgender, queer joy and the complex way transgender artists fit into feminist art and theory. My work doesn't intend to convince a viewer that I should exist, instead it attempts to explore the trans experience, and its significance in art and wider society, through sculpture and performance.

Much of my work attempts to activate materials through connection to the body. For example, I explored gender dysphoria as a tactile experience of dislocation from one's body by creating a structure that extended from the shoulder and replicated the shoulder's form two meters away, giving the wearer the uncanny sensory experience of their body being apart from them. This is in part inspired by the “Body Extensions” of Rebecca Horn which create a posthuman aesthetic through prosthetics that alters the human sensory experience while challenging where the human being ends. Furthermore, similar works connect to my own body as part of a public performance inspired by the way non-binary artist Cassilis engineers a sense of voyeurism into their clay-and-body performances through the use of an audience to explore the commodification of trans bodies.

Text-based research is an integral part of my work. Recently this has focused on Trans and Feminist Marxism which suggest that the strict gender binary is imposed to allow the accumulation of capital. However, I feel that research extends beyond just text. I think of the act of drawing as a way of exploring ideas one cannot verbalize, and so I use drawing throughout my process. Furthermore, I view queer rave culture as a form of research. The queer rave scene embodies radically free motion of all bodies, spontaneous care outside of individualist society and personal exploration of self-expression. To me these spaces are invaluable. I am fully invested in their survival. Lastly, exhibitions are a big source of inspiration. Recently, seeing Proudick's use of surreal pop imagery to create a distorted childhood nostalgia at the Hannah Barry Gallery revealed my emotional relationship with my childhood and has inspired me to explore nostalgia for certain aspects of childhood I didn't experience.

Kingston Foundation has given me insight into some of the theories behind Art, through group lectures and personal research. For example, the reference of the Abject in a sculpture talk led me to explore the term's origin in Kristeva's “Powers of Horror” and then relate this to the transgender bodily experience as well as the social abjection of transgender people. Foundation has also shown me the significance of material choice, to create value, symbolism and tactility, which led me to use the medium of raspberry jelly. Its multiple sensory qualities - taste, smell, mouth-feel allowed me to create an immersive experience, as well as cultivate nostalgia and reference childhood. I have also learnt about the importance of context and the installation of artwork to convey meaning. In a recent piece the installation of a viscerally over-sized chicken fillet cast in jelly on an eye-level traditional plinth under an overhead light gives the overwise offputting object a sense of divinity to challenge the social abjection of drag where 'chicken fillets' are the name given to body forms.

I want to go on to study Fine Art at BA level to be part of a diverse community of passionate, thinking, creative artists and continue to be lost in the expanse of ideas through conversations with peers and tutors. I hope to continue to create work that relates both intimately to my identity as well as to contemporary art and politics.