IG: @kefinzheng
kefinzheng.com

Remember That I Am Thy Creature

Navigating my existence as a young trans gal has long felt unaccompanied and demoralizing. Looking to media, images I saw of “myself” were nothing but exotic, fetishized, monstrous, disgusting, and shameful. Like Mary Shelley’s Creature, being brought into a world of pain, suffering, and exclusion has fueled a rage in me against the conditions in which I struggle to exist. In my work I examine Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, a telling of a Creature both created and rejected by mankind. I engage with Mary Shelley’s text through the lens of transgender subjectivity. Among themes of creating a body through alchemical intervention, Shelley’s work also identifies with being rejected by a world, in search of acceptance and connecting with others who are forced to contend with a similar existence. In this exploration I am engaging with my practice as a vehicle to connect and collaborate with other trans people, working closely with the notion of trans intercorporeality— the ensembles of touch, connection, embodied intimacy, and identification that circulate between trans subjects. The subversion that my practice performs is not in the image or in the representation, but in the simple act of being able to be next to one another.

Bio

kef is an artist from Vernon, Connecticut, currently based in Portland, Maine— attempting to navigate their existence as an Asian American trans artist. kef is interested in how identity and relationships to the world are constructed through encountered ideas and representations. Their work engages with themes such as gender, performativity, and personal relationships. Through staged scenes and portraiture, as well as through directed performance and happenings, they engage with their practice as a vehicle to connect and collaborate with others sharing a common experience. On Thursdays you can find them defying God’s plan and overdosing on estrogen.