「Assigned Gender 」

An experimental piece mixing digital and print media. This piece is part of my ongoing exploration of gender, a personal topic as I grew up surrounded by super rigid and very machista ideals about what it means to be a “man” or a “woman,” which never sat right with me. And if those are the roles I’m expected to choose between, I’d rather just not pick either. With this work, I’m exploring my own journey of pushing back against those kinds of expectations and looking at what it means to build your own version of gender—one that actually feels real and lived, not assigned.

The visual part of the piece starts with a skeletal body—something that I’ve used before in previous pieces. From the inside out, it fills up with color specific carnations. The colors include a soft pink and white; representing maternal love, care, innocence—all tied to the way I was loved as a child, especially by my mom. Back then, there was this strong sense of adoration, like I was being seen and cherished for fitting into what she expected of me. That love hasn’t gone away completely, but it feels different now. I still think she loves me, but it’s more reserved—more about respect than affection, if that makes sense. Next are the colors—green and yellow. Green hints at queerness and the hope of fully living open. But yellow brings in the reality of what that costs—rejection, and despair; the quiet kind of grief that comes from being honest about who you are, even if that honesty creates space between you and the people you love. These colors clash a bit, but that tension is important. It shows the emotional messiness of being true to yourself in a world, and in a family, that might not fully accept it.

Development

For the moodboard, I collected stylistic inspiration on what the piece could potentially look like. I wanted the print itself to look soft with no harsh edges. In the initial Development, I hadn't planned to do anything aside from the print itself. The 3D room came to be later in the process after discussing with the professor.