Focusing through a Trans Marxist and materialist lens, this exhibition presents artworks and cultural artifacts from six of the Met’s departments which depict transition, regardless of the subject’s identification. These pieces span an array of different media, cultures, places, and time periods, illustrating the historical endurance and universality of both transition and the artistic, erotic, and semiotic attraction towards transition. Visitors will travel from Edo Japan; to a Mandak village in Papua New Guinea; to the European Renaissance; and Harlem, New York at the dawn of the 21st century, all with an eye towards illuminating transition as “less a volitional act of identification, let alone a subversion of the gender binary, than a concrete response to living and working in the world” (Gill-Peterson).
Allegory of Misfortune: Transsexuality In Between Identification and Transition
Charlie "Chayyim” Shaw is a multidisciplinary artist and archivist who is graduating with an MSLIS and Advanced Certificate in Archives. Charlie Chayyim grounds his practice in lens-based work, drag performance, and archival research. His research interests include digital imaging, digital preservation and curation, and critical archival theory, particularly in the context of historical materials related to trans identity and drag performance.