No Binaries No Boxes
This piece, No Binaries No Boxes, is about the ways that research (and society in general) often ask us for information about our genders, without involving us in deciding how those questions are asked or what the answers are. This topic was discussed in the presentation by Mike Smith (from the AIDS Committee of Toronto), where there was a discussion of how gender might be inquired about to be more inclusive of trans and gender-diverse people.
This art piece literally declares “no binaries no boxes” in reference to gender not being a pre-determined binary, and no boxes meaning that I/we don’t want to be put in a box – and also in reference to the tick boxes we are asked to check on forms or on research to ascribe a word to our genders.
Cis man
Cis woman
Transgender man
Transgender woman
Non-binary
I didn’t leave one box to go into another
This piece challenges us to think beyond binary notions of gender as a society, and also to recognize the ways that sometimes even within 2SLGBTQIA+ community research we continue to put ourselves and our communities in boxes. Perhaps we as communities can disrupt normative ways of conducting research and relating to our communities and create new ways of being that embody the diversity and ingenuity of the communities we come from.
Leopard slugs, to me, are iconic and embody so much of queer culture. From their fashion to their intertwined iridescent phalluses locked in an embrace of mutual pleasure and genetic information exchange, they are very queer creatures. Their mating ritual is beautiful, surprising, and transcends what many of us believed possible. They exist in their natural habitat in this print with mushrooms and ferns – equally fascinating fungi and flora.
Brettley Mason
I am a multi-media artist working on issues of gender, desire, the body, and the sacred. I see my art as interlinked with my activism: this shows up as organizing artists’ fundraisers such as “Artists Against Pipelines”, a fundraiser for the Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en. It also shows up through photography and personal story sharing about my life as a fat, disabled, queer and trans white person – which is about wanting to see the representation I did not see in the world when I was growing up and through my realization of my queerness and transness. I lived in Calgary till I was in my late 20s, and then moved to the West Coast, where I have friends and family. My roots trace to France (by way of 500 years in Quebec), Ireland, England, and Germany.
I also make films with my husbear, and got a Canada Arts Council Grant in 2017 to attend the premier of our film Firkytoodle in Amsterdam at the TranScreen Film Festival. It has since screened in Germany, Canada and the US. My photography and writing have been published in children’s books, magazines, and zines. When I am not making art I work as a counsellor, and live in a small coastal town on so-called Vancouver Island on Stz’uminus, Penelakut, Cowichan and Snuneymuxw territories with my husbear, 5 chickens, and our dog Prada (who sometimes is mistaken for a chicken by the chickens).
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