A Place to be understood and free

Q – How does your work incorporate your queerness?

My queerness and my flexibility regarding how I express my femininity / masculinity influences all of my work to some degree.

I am a lot more free to do work that goes beyond the stereotypes of what it means to be a “woman”

and I aim to provoke people so as to make them question the social norms they accept as being part of daily life. I have also realized that a lot of people do not have a safe space in which to express their gender identity or sexual orientation, and so I do make an effort to create that space for people when I am working with them. I ask them: “What aspects of yourself do you feel like exploring?

Q – How important do you feel queerness in arts & culture is?

The importance of queerness in arts and culture cannot be overstated. I would like to think that if I had more examples of women being bisexual (without having to cater to the male gaze) I would have been more able to explore and accept my sexuality earlier on. Currently we still do not have enough queer characters in the media – especially ones that do not adhere to any sterotyopes or who are not fetishized by the media for their orientation.

I would love to see more queer characters in family films. Children do not have to be protected against queerness

I do not believe that children should be protected from queerness because queerness is not dangerous. Ignorance about sexual orientations and a lack of representation is dangerous.

Q – What do you want people to take away from your work?

I want people to feel. What they feel does not matter as much – as long as I am allowing them a space in which to experience their emotions (often buried and repressed) and through which they can become more aware of their place in society. I want people to question why they believe what they do and who it benefits.

I want to give people who have been through similar struggles something to identify with

Through my work, I am always looking to get closer to a raw, vulnerable, human truth. Yet the answer does not matter as much as the shared process of discovery. I want people to start thinking for themselves again, even if my work is just a tiny part of what inspires that.

Q – The theme of our first issue is ‘Myth’ can you tell us how you interpreted that?

Very loosely. I like the idea that our social norms regarding what it means to be queer / a woman / bisexual are myths that we push into being realities. Gender, as we know it, is a myth. The idea that women have to choose or to prove their bisexuality is a myth. Society as we construct it is a myth that we choose to believe, and when we believe it, it shapes the reality of the next day.

Q. -How important is it to be able to have a space that you can express yourself as a Bi /Queer artist / creator?

Very. I appear straight and people often assume I am, so generally I find it easier to access and create spaces in which to work for myself. I am very aware that this is not the same for everyone – when I think of the mortality rate of trans people (especially trans people of colour) I know that there is still a lot of work to be done in creating safe spaces for queer artists, and queer people in general. I do often get comments (especially from men and people with a very conservative approach to religion ) that I should “take my work down because it is too explicit” or that “no one will want to hire me with the work I am sharing.” One of the most common things for them to tell me is that the world “is the way it is” and that I have to act accordingly, or that I am putting myself in danger by sharing my work. But

I am not working for the world as it is, I am working for the world of the future. A progressive one

Q – If you had one piece of advice for your younger self (looking back now) what would it be and why?

I would tell myself that

you do not have to be 100% gay / lesbian in order to be queer

As a child it was often assumed that I was straight and I went along with that assumption, despite conflicting feelings and experiences indicating otherwise. When I finally came out I felt obligated to prove myself, since I am in a hetereosexual relationships. I would have wanted myself to know that I do not have to “earn” the legitimacy of my sexual orientation. I would also have told my adolescent self that it is okay to feel attracted to people regardless of gender – my first proper crush was a girl and I felt a lot of shame because of it.

Q. -If you had to sum up the wonder that is the bi community in one sentence, what would it be?