Find the World Where You Are

Find The World Where You Are

Sept. 7 - 28 , 2018

Frankie Toan

“There wasn’t enough for her in the world she was born into, so she made up what she needed.” - Ntozake Shange*

Despite the current explosion of queer and trans* media attention, living as a queer or trans* person still means navigating many worlds and many bodies; the body you go to work with, the body you come home to, the body you shop in at the grocery store. Historically, queer and trans* people, specifically queer and trans* people of color, have engaged in creative world making as a response to this navigation.  Find the World Where You Are is my attempt to capture elements of these worlds, and the people who are making them.

Using many elements of identity and community formation, as well as DIY making processes, I am exploring the worlds that I navigate on a daily basis. From the legal process of changing one’s name (which in Colorado involves getting fingerprinted), to influential texts, to the many people whose presence and work expose glimpses of the worlds that could be, this show attempts to synthesize the lived experience with current theory and visibility strategies.

While much of this work is new, I have repurposed some older work made over the last 2 years showing how bodies of work blend into one another—just like my many bodies exist together. 

* Ntozake Shange quoted by Treva Ellison in the essay The Labor of Werking It: The Performance and Protest Strategies of Sir Lady Java found in the book Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility