Materials: Raffia, Tissue Paper, Cardboard, Particle Board, Apoxie Sculpt, Acrylic Paint, Acrylic Ink, Faux Fur.
For my thesis, I created a small mixed-media diorama of a werewolf figure resembling myself, within an environment, the Tallgrass Aspen Parkland Biome, a transitional ecosystem unique to my home state of Minnesota. This piece is a retrospective on my transness, my journey, and how researching gothic literature depictions of monsters led me to find language for my content and existence as a hybrid queer person, existing outside of Western societies’ gendered system.
This work is full of symbolism and metaphor relating to the core themes of hybrid identity, community, and place all conveyed with something trans. I chose the werewolf to represent myself as it exists as not fully man or wolf, but something in between achieved through physical transformation. The background, the Tallgrass Aspen Parkland, with the Aspen Grove representing my community and friends and family who sheltered me when I was figuring out my identity, and the prairie representing my opening up to the audience and society about my hybrid identity.