Mermaid Doll Starter Pack
I took some time to share this piece and I'm really glad I did because some things need the right moment to be presented.
When I originally made this work it was for the exhibition DESENHO at Eye 2 Pencil studio in London on November 2024, invited by artists Joana Galego and Nuno Gonçalves.
On the same month it was when I started working in Amsterdam's Red Light District at the windows.
My aim had been for a long time to make a parallel between sexwork which I already did and performance art so when I saw the opportunity, I took it as a way to create income since sw is in itself performance too.
I have been working towards doing performance with projected animation. I see the potential of joining these two apparently distinct worlds. I think that with so much investment being made on AI we need more and more people wanting to immerse themselves in the process of artistic creation.
I value illustrators a lot and have seen more and more of our workbeing replaced by AI generated images. It seems people care less and less about how things are made. What is the process behind everything we consume.
This week watching Kat Blaque and Theodoor Grimes post of their own take as black and trans illustrators of the Starter Pack AI trend made me realise it was my time to share my work too.
I'm afraid that soon, window workers will be replaced by AI as well. We can already see that in fictional series such as Pantheon. Since practically all of the red light district is made for the male gaze, unless there are influential people who protect the rights sex workers who do not fit into the gender binary, control over the experience will be strenghtened and modelled by cis white hetero male desires, and eventually harm cis (white) women too.
As these men are driven by control over feminine, trans, queer and cosmic bodies, they will end up replacing us with non human dolls whether they’re AI in a simulation or not.
It was never my intention to come out publicly as a swer because of the way that I'm already marginalized for being black and trans, and to keep that from the knowledge of my family. I was too afraid of getting so much exposure and visibility that it would be impossible to control my privacy and end up exploding on people for keeping so much anger towards cis and hetero environments who don’t make any effort in making trans lives easier. If I did come out it would be when I was in a more stable situation regarding housing, healthcare and job. Nevertheless I do now because I need to reach the people I need and who need me.
It’s just very beyond to me how I made a piece which after some months became an AI trend when I never event wanted to involve myself in proving anything.
I originally made the piece as a creative way to ask people for donations to pay my bills and maybe also get some items to look prettier and also use in performances.
The world really teaches us, trans people to hate ourselves. When I'm working on the windows, the real job is to keep myself up and finding ways to feel touched, to not lose my humanity. What keeps me are heartfelt connections with myself and sharing the love I have for trans people with clients. Loving my way beyond the room I'm in. Knowing that there are many of me and like me, that I'm neverending like a stream and if I can love them we are always connected.
Knowing that it's not about me but about the work. The work of being involved in the liberation from induced captivity. Like a doll inside a starter pack whose reality can vanish because people don't know how to play anymore, and so she had to play outside of the glass box and make her own rules.
How to make things up as we do when we are kids and not worried if we should play only with cars or with dolls. When we're not rushing to be right or finished but lost in the engagement of what we are learning.
To be trans for me is to live on both sides of the window. Because of that I can never ignore swers and neither should you.
It's because I love myself that I can do this work. No body that doesn't love themselves can have an impact on the environment because the environment in itself is hostile in its majority in the times we're living in. It takes a great deal of heart (the word from which courage comes from) to be able to bring revolution to our whole bodies.
The work is to make your body a revolution, a movement in itself. Only a body that is already a revolution can move structures. For that we need to be movement, not just in motion. The movement of clearing the way and keeping ourselves free for whatever comes in the present moment that needs our full presence and attention.
The work is to be the doll that animates themselves through their senses into an existence that is defiant of the established power.
That is my aim as an animator and performer.
This is something that has never been done before and I wish it had been because then I would have someone to follow and not create everything on my own. It feels very lonely.
But I think of all the other trans femmes (especially the black and the marginalized) who may see what I’m doing and be inspired in the same way that I am inspired by them.
I hope to uplift someone when they see me in the windows or online. Two spaces on which the screen barrier can be used to conjure imaginations with a gravity pull that grounds any symptom of colonial madness that may be distressing our bodies.
I am alive and that is because I love myself. In a world on which I’m encouraged to disappear to be vulnerable like this is an act of resistance. I have to, for my own sake and for those who are facing similar challenges.
We are lightyears further so sometimes it may seem like we’re not moving. Believe and know that you are. And thank you for believing in yourself. Whenever you think no one cares, know that you do, and that is so powerful.
