Armor

2024

sterling silver, brass, steel, recycled leather and upholstery, cotton thread

There’s an agony in the otherness of being transgender. A knowledge that no matter what you do, socially or medically, you will always be put in a different category due to the sheer coincidence of your physical body. The idea of masculinity, and specifically masculine sexuality, is heavily tied to the phallus. I’m not perceived as a man in the same way that cis men are. I’m a boy with a vagina, an oddity, someone’s fetish. 

I often find myself grieving a body I was never given, castrated by the universe before I even entered the world. So I built this armor, to cover the wound where my cock should be.