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Faryda Moumouh

Faryda Moumouh

door | jul 3, 2017 | Art, Conceptual Art

Faryda Moumouh

Text JF. Pierets     Photos Faryda Moumouh

 

Why choose photography?
Since I was young I was already drawing, watching, registering details from the things I saw. It was an urge and I had the feeling I was chosen by a visual language, which I pursued. I went to art school when I was 14 and it made me discover a cultural world that was alien to me. It opened the doors in my head and in my heart. Photography was love at first sight. What scared me in the beginning was the technicality of a camera. When I went to school cameras were still analogue. So you had to get going with diaphragms and shutter speeds. However, what I found very liberating was the speed of the medium. When I was a child I wanted to capture every detail of an insect but I had to do it before it was gone. Now I could just take a picture of everything that caught my eye. It was that directness, that velocity that got me hooked.

What inspires you? 
I get inspired by society and the context in which I find myself. I’m not necessarily talking about politics, but we all find ourselves in a societal context in which you are free to respond or not. And if something triggers me, I have to act accordingly. It leads to a photographic series anticipating religion, or headscarves, or ethnicity. Those aren’t my themes per se, but I can’t ignore something that’s omnipresent. I call it philosophical image processing. My antennas are always on alert for images, words I read or hear, that can bring me towards a new interpretation. Inspiration is everywhere. I write everything down in little notebooks so I can start researching whenever something stays with me. Sometimes I call myself a philographer. A philosopher who meets a photographer.

You are reading and seeing a lot. How do you decide what to take and what to leave behind? 
Most of the time I think and work on one theme, quote or story per year. That’s the starting point to frame and identify what I think and feel. I research, read, make sketches, and look for other sources that connect with the initial thought. If you look at my work process you’d think I’m a painter or a drawer because I collect thousands of images to filter and to support the result. I call this work in progress ‘photographic drawing’. When I’ve gathered enough information, I unleash my intellect, my logic reasoning and continue in a purely visual manner. The images themselves lead me towards the final result. Which is both analytic and visual. I always trust my heart to lead me to where I’m supposed to go.

Can you talk me through one of your latest series? 
I re-read ‘The stranger’ by Albert Camus and it got me thinking about being the stranger versus being strange. Which is a very vague concept. I started photographing in Antwerp’s typical concentrated migrant areas but that turned out to be the wrong approach. Documentary is not my course. Then I thought about registering the reflection of those worlds. The reflections in mirrors, in shop windows, etc. to capture the thought that people are always judging the first layer of what they see. So instead of creating a linear sequence, I put the layers on top of each other to make a dialogue between the different pictures. In the end you have a strange image, consisting of multiple reflections of a strange world. They almost look like paintings. So it started with a book by Camus and I ended up here. It’s unpredictable. I never know where I will end up.

 


‘Art gives a more added value to my life than religion. I don’t need to listen to a human invention. I’d rather listen to myself in everything that I do.’

Do you aim to keep your work recognizable? And is that necessary?
When I’m photographing I’m not thinking about my specific visual language. And if it’s connected to my other work. However, I think my intuition is a constant guidance which, unconsciously, makes the images correspond with one another.

How do you see your evolution?
In the beginning my way of working was a bit too noncommittal. My way of capturing an image happened a bit too spontaneously. Over time this evolved into a more philosophical and conceptual manner. Whereas now I make a combination of those two styles. Conceptual but intuitive. I feel this course is the most accurate and closest to who I am as an artist. I feel very much at home with what I am doing.

Ai Weiwei, Joseph Beuys and Marina Abramovic are 3 of your heroes. What binds them together? 
Activism. And the freedom they claim to express their minds. Art doesn’t necessarily have to be activism. Personally, I find that social engagement always adds an extra value to the work or to the artist. I find what Ai Weiwei does from his context very important; his search for a full-blown democracy, the right to have an opinion and how he communicates that to the world. Activism depends on the context though. For me there’s a nuance between activism and social awareness. In my work it’s a social notion with lots of room for interpretation. If I were an activist, I would have to express my work in a more targeted and concrete manner. But I like my work to act as a window through which I can inspire a dialogue. It obviously has its community themes but it’s more in a societal – than an activist context.

And what about religion? 
Art gives a more added value to my life than religion. I don’t need to listen to a human invention. I’d rather listen to myself in everything that I do.

Do you identify with your work?
Very much so. Being an artist defines my identity more than my background or roots. I’m an individualist and an existentialist. The notion that I am here and that I’m allowed to be here gives me the permission to claim my existence. That kind of freedom is almost sacred. As a teenager I found a lot of comfort in Sartre. It brought me the awareness that I exist, which has been a guidance throughout my life and has been my primary motive ever since. Not only as an artist but also as a human being. Let everybody be.

Do you address certain topics in your work in order to have people ask questions? 
It depends on the question. For example, I constantly get asked where I’m from and it disturbs me that my ethnicity always takes the upper hand. I know it’s because of how I look and because of my name, but sometimes I just want to be. I want to talk about my work, about what I think. However, before I can do that, I always have to explain where I come from. I believe we have to accept that the world and our society is colored, but we don’t always need to talk about it. Because it always makes you ‘the other’.

How about your place in the art scene? 
There are moments when I would like to have more public recognition for my work. But I’m very sensitive when people contact me when they need a female artist, a foreign artist, or both. Work by artist Charif Benhelima for example is exposed all over the world. Everybody talks about the strong visual language of his pictures which transcends his Moroccan-ness. His work goes beyond needing an excuse to have an ethnic artist in your collection. It’s just great work. And that’s what matters. Only with that kind of mentality can you get an exact reflection of the world in a museum or a gallery. And that’s what art is all about, isn’t it?

 

www.faryda.com

© Faryda Moumouh
© Faryda Moumouh
© Faryda Moumouh
© Faryda Moumouh
© Faryda Moumouh
© Faryda Moumouh

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 20.

Read the complete issue here. 

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Nigel Grimmer

Nigel Grimmer

door | jun 25, 2015 | Conceptual Photography

Nigel Grimmer

Text JF. Pierets    Photos Nigel Grimmer

 

Quirky and theatrical, is how I described Nigel Grimmer’s work the first time I encountered it; tense and layered upon further inspection. Grimmer’s art practice is an ongoing investigation exploring the relationship between public and personal imagery, focusing on the language of the family album and blurring the line between fine art and snapshot photography.

 

You are a teacher, a photographer and, I know you as, a visual artist. How do you define yourself? 
Definitely as an artist and not a photographer: I use different mediums like sculpting, printing and working with found objects. And when I use photography I definitely use it as a means to an end. The most important thing for me is getting a good picture; I don’t care much about the lens or the technical stuff. Saying this out loud sounds a bit odd, since I teach photography; but it’s important my students create their own concepts and aren’t just the technicians for the ideas of others.

Your work focuses on the language of the family album. Why?
Looking at the family album was the starting point for my art practice. I was thinking about why some people could not, or would not be able to be in the album. How could something simply meant as being documentation cause an anxiety to conform?

Do explain.
When I began my degree I wanted to work about something I knew, so I could speak with some kind of authority. I was very young, had only just left home, so decided to work with our family snapshots. I went home and looked in the album my mother made and kept in a drawer. I discovered that I’d disappeared from our album in high school, that I was no longer being recorded. I wasn’t conforming to the traditional snapshot language. My mother was stuck; where were the next images – me with a girlfriend, me with a baby, me getting married?

That’s quite heavy. 
My mother wasn’t leaving me out intentionally; just no material was being produced for her that conformed to the conventions of the album. She was stuck, she had this idea of a life for me and it was hard to adjust. My parents are very supportive of me; they even model for all my projects. They are probably waiting for me to bring a bloke home… A gay teaching colleague told me when she came out she was systematically edited from a relative’s album and that is very different. The relative put stickers over her face. I think it’s visually really funny, editing somebody out with glittery stickers of rainbows and unicorns, that album must be the campest thing ever! But the systematic removal no doubt was emotionally crippling at the time. 

How does this translate into your work?
I create pictures of my friends and family members through the continual reworking of the family album format. When you have your family picture taken, people often say: ‘act naturally!’ But what does mean? So in my series, for example Roadkill, I like to focus on this fakeness. The photographs have been taken at traditional snapshot moments such as holidays with friends and family; I wanted to see how long it would take for someone to actually ask to be in one of my crazy family photos, instead of a traditional snapshot. My mother actually took the first photo in the series with me modeling, as I needed an example to show other people what to do. I never thought my father would be in the project, but I told him on the phone that the best selling picture was one of my mother. As we finished the conversation he said: ‘think how many you’ll sell if I’m in the picture’. He understood I wasn’t going to do anything else except be an artist so he just stepped in. In Roadkill he’s a frog, but still not as popular as my mother the owl though.

You have a section on your website which is called ‘I could have done that’. Can you elaborate? I always tried to make the kind of art that people can join in with, which has become an important aspect of my work. My photos often look like they have been done in a studio, but they are actually done in the model’s apartment with natural light. And the Photoshop I do, is just like something you would do on Instagram; like adding some contrast or sharpness. There’s nothing complicated to it, nothing has been edited in or out. 
 

‘In the first project I used the doll to fill in the gaps in my family album. For example I did not have a graduation ceremony, nor did I get married. I used the doll to act out those things for photographs.’

My camera is also quite old, a lot of my students have a better or newer ones. But they are quite surprised that I can get the results I do with such basic equipment. They get new lenses or they get a new camera every year but then take the same pictures. It’s really more about the ideas. I use simple techniques and readily accessible materials to encourage others to expand my projects, especially my alternative snapshot albums.

Part of your work is based on a doll that resembles you. There are two projects with this doll: ‘Nigel Doll’ and ‘Nigelacra’. 
In the first project I used the doll to fill in the gaps in my family album. For example I did not have a graduation ceremony, nor did I get married. I used the doll to act out those things for photographs. For Nigelacra I wanted to move away from the physical family album and think about how social media now records our lives. The project features guys wearing a mask based on the doll; it’s my first nude project. It was also the first project I did with people I did not know; the models were recruited from dating apps. The profile I had on the dating app was just an advert to ask if people wanted to be in this project. I wanted to see if I could turn myself into an Internet meme. It took me almost fifteen years to get thirty Roadkill photographs, and four years for someone to ask to be in one of them without any prompt.  But it took only a few months to get thirty Nigelacra and guys were asking to be in the photos, which they’d seen on Facebook or various apps, after a week.

But tell me, how that does this work? You go to the house of people you don’t know and they take their clothes off?
Well, yes, actually. I offered them a print or an invite to the exhibition, but mostly they just wanted to be a part of the project. Like being part of the ice bucket challenge. Sometimes they asked me to photograph something else as a swap. Somebody asked to shoot their passport picture, somebody else asked for a head shot, another one asked for a fashion shoot. Some of them wanted better pictures for the dating site or wanted to get into porn…I met people from all walks of life; some had crazy jobs, it was very diverse. There were beekeepers, poets, fashion designers, museum curators and even an actual porn star. 

To stay with the topic of masks, your latest project ‘Art Drag Album’ shows you using reproductions of exotic paintings by artists such as J.H Lynch and Vladimir Tretchikoff as disguises. What can you tell me about the series?
For Art Drag Album I introduced a secondary picture plane within the photographic frame. The kitsch vintage paintings were used to create ‘windows’ within the frame causing slippage between the illusionary foreground and background of the photograph. This highlighted the flatness, and so the artificiality, of the photograph. Much of the history of photography is based on a male quest for an exotic other, and these kitsch portraits of strangely hued women reference this ‘otherness’. But I’m changing these exotic beauties into something jarringly common; now they walk the street in sportswear or pyjamas, they’ve been assimilated.

Future plans?
One of Art Drag Album is about to be turned into a giant photo mural for the Olympic Park in London! I’m currently working on the first extensive book of my photo projects called Anti-Portrait. I’ve done quite well this year selling work, so am trying to find an agent or gallery representation so I can spend more time on the projects. I’m going to turn Nigelacra into an app. And I’m always looking for models for all my projects if anyone wants to join in! You can contribute images to any of Nigel’s projects, to be displayed on the I could have done that page of his website.

 

www.nigelgrimmer.com

 

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 14.

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Et Alors? magazine. A global celebration of diversity.

Billy, the world’s first out and proud gay doll

Billy, the world’s first out and proud gay doll

door | jun 25, 2015 | History

Billy, the world’s first out and proud gay doll

Text JF. Pierets    Artwork John McKitterick & Juan Andres

 

To celebrate and document their conceptual artwork Billy, also known as Billy – The World’s First Out and Proud Gay Doll, artists John McKitterick and Juan Andres have launched a new website. 

 

In the highly politically and emotionally charged atmosphere of London in the late 1980´s with the Thatcher government’s hostility towards the gay community resulting in the legislation of Section 28 and creativity in the capital derailed due to the AIDS epidemic, artists John McKitterick and Juan Andres began collaborating on a conceptual artwork. As artists they made a choice about the world they had to examine, respond to and present futures of. 

The concept that directed the art they were to produce was the creation of a character, one who would capture the public’s imagination, attract positive attention, encourage debate and bring further visibility, understanding and acceptance of the new in all its diversity. The initial artwork was a purposefully controversial sculpture, presented naked, exaggerated, realistic and beautifully realised, an inspirational, social and sexual statement entitled Billy. A conceptual work of art and therefore totally premeditated, Billy was devised and planned in a manner that allowed for multiple artworks to be produced long after the exhibition of the initial sculpture. This approach was essential to McKitterick and Andres, so they would be able to continue to communicate the art concept into the future, to other artists, creatives and institutions, to the corporate, religious and political worlds and most importantly to the public, via further artworks, sculptures, art actions, exhibitions, books, music, film, photography, commercial products, charitable fundraising and the media. In order for the work to be successful McKitterick and Andres instinctively knew Billy had to exist both within the areas of and cross the boundaries between contemporary art and mass culture. This would be art through communication, collaboration and provocation, a place ‘where attitude becomes form.’

Billy was first exhibited on November 15th, 1994 as twelve distinctly related sculptures, each within an edition of one hundred, at The Freedom Gallery in Soho, London (sadly one week before Leigh Bowery´s Minty played their last gig at the venue). Immediately Billy was celebrated internationally by the mainstream media, arousing interest and excitement from other artists and was actively encouraged and applauded by a supportive public. The more conservative in society, including sections of the gay community, unwittingly providing more intended visibility and further debate, viciously attacked Billy, a postmodern mix of art, politics and sexuality. The newly launched official website illustrates the complete Billy phenomenon with images and text, documenting the history of the Billy concept from the years 1993 to 2003.

It is over twenty years since Billy was first exhibited as a sculpture at a London Arts Benefit for Aids in November 1994, in what was a highly politicized period in gay history. A conceptual artwork created by artists John McKitterick and Juan Andres, the Billy concept championed diversity, gay visibility, safe sex and Aids awareness. Originally 1200 limited editions of the Billy sculpture were created, garnering media attention on all five continents, in 32 countries and in ten languages.

 

‘Billy is not political art but rather art for political times.’

Following the great success of the sculpture, McKitterick and Andres kept firmly to the original concept and three years later Billy was purposely introduced to the mass market as Billy – The World’s First Out and Proud Gay Doll. Over the next decade Billy became the world’s first and most famous, gay product, a beautifully executed, technically advanced, mass produced doll, punching high above his height of 13 inches / 32cms.

After his US debut in 1997 Billy instantly became a iconic figure and saw himself in over 800 stores worldwide and the Billy concept developed to include his own website Billyworld, his boyfriend Carlos, his best friend Tyson, the soda Billy Pop, the music CD Out and About With Billy, himself dressed by Alexander McQueen and sixty five other designers and artists for the major exhibition and auction Billy Opens His Closet at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Soho, New York, the movies Billy 2000 – Billy Goes Hollywood and Jeffrey’s Hollywood Screen Trick, the photographic book and exhibition Big Fun With Billy, himself in the Andy Warhol Museum and the Keith Haring Foundation, himself in the Science Museum’s permanent exhibit Making The Modern World and himself as 16 Feet Billy in an art exhibition in London.

Billy was honored alongside Lady Diana, Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John as one of the ’12 People of 1997’. With a single event in 1998 he raised over $425,000 for a major AIDS charity and articles have been written in major publications such as The Sunday Times, The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Guardian and El Pais, acknowledging Billy as a cultural phenomenon.

By 2004 John McKitterick and Juan Andres believed that the Billy concept had succeeded in its aims and objectives and began work on new art projects. Today Billy is highly sought after with editions commanding considerable prices at exhibition and auction. After six years in the jungles of Central America researching and developing new artworks, John McKitterick and Juan Andres returned to Europe to continue their art practice using the artistic name ‘oneandtwo’.

 

www.thebillyconcept.com
www.oneandtwo.eu

 

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 14.

Read the complete issue here. 

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Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay

door | jun 25, 2015 | Art

Sonia Delaunay

Text & Photos Courtesy of Tate Modern

 

Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) was a key figure in the Parisian avant-garde, whose vivid and colorful work spanned painting, fashion and design. Tate Modern presents the first UK retrospective to assess the breadth of her vibrant artistic career, from her early figurative painting in the 1900s to her energetic abstract work in the 1960s. This exhibition offers a radical reassessment of Delaunay’s importance as an artist, showcasing her originality and creativity across the twentieth century.

 

Born in Odessaand trained in Germany, Sonia Delaunay (née Stern, then Terk) came to Paris in 1906 to join the emerging avant-garde. She met and married the artist Robert Delaunay, with whom she developed Simultaneism– abstract compositions of dynamic contrasting colors and shapes. Many iconic examples of these works are brought together at Tate Modern, including Bal Bullier 1913 and Electric Prisms 1914. Her work expressed the energy of modern urban life, celebrating the birth of electric street lighting and the excitement of contemporary ballets and ballrooms.

The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay shows how the artist dedicated her life to experimenting with color and abstraction, bringing her ideas off the canvas and into the world through tapestry, textiles, mosaic and fashion. Delaunay premiered her first ‘simultaneous dress’ of bright patchwork colors in 1913 and opened a boutique in Madrid in 1918. Her Atelier Simultané in Paris went on to produce radical and progressive designs for scarves, umbrellas, hats, shoes and swimming costumes throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Clients included the Hollywood star Gloria Swanson and the architect Erno Goldfinger, as well department stores like Metz & Co and Liberty. The exhibition reveals how Delaunay’s designs presented her as a progressive woman synonymous with modernity: embroidering poetry onto fabric, turning her apartment into a three-dimensional collage, and creating daring costumes for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. 

The diverse inspirations behind Delaunay’s work are also explored, from the highly personal approach to colour which harked back to her childhood in Russia, to the impact of her years in Spain and Portugal where she painted The Orange Seller 1915 and Flamenco Singers 1915-16. The show also reveals the inspiration provided by modern technology throughout Delaunay’s career, from the Trans-Siberian Railway to the airplane, and from the Eiffel Tower to the electric light bulb. It also includes her vast seven-meter murals Motor, Dashboard and Propeller, created for the 1937 International Exposition in Paris and never before shown in the UK.

 

‘Her work expressed the energy of modern urban life, celebrating the birth of electric street lighting and the excitement of contemporary ballets and ballrooms.’

Following her husband’s death in 1941, Sonia Delaunay’s work took on more formal freedom, including rhythmic compositions in angular forms and harlequin colours, which in turn inspired geometric tapestries, carpets and mosaics. Delaunay continued to experiment with abstraction in the post-war era, just as she had done since its birth in the 1910s, becoming a champion for a new generation of artists and an inspiring figure for creative practitioners to this day.

The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay is curated at Tate Modern by Juliet Bingham, Curator International Art, with Juliette Rizzi, Assistant Curator. It was organized by the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris-Musées and Tate Modern, and was realized with the exceptional help of Bibliothèque nationale de France and Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou.

 

www.tate.org.uk

 

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 14.

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Et Alors? magazine. A global celebration of diversity.

Rhyannon Styles

Rhyannon Styles

door | jun 25, 2015 | Portraits

Rhyannon Styles

Text JF. Pierets    Photos Maxime Imbert

 

There’s a new transgender voice on the mainstream platform; Rhyannon Styles is a performance artist now writing a column for Elle UK. A column in which she reflects on the gender transition she began from male to female in 2012. A conversation about transformation, balance and living today instead of tomorrow.

 

First of all: congratulations with your Elle assignment. How did that happen? 
Elle approached a PR lady whom I know and they asked her if she knew anyone who was currently in transition. She recommended me. After several email exchanges with Elle, and me giving them some examples of my writing, they decided they wanted me to be their transgender columnist.  

Why did you say yes? 
I decided to pursue this opportunity because I think this is a really amazing platform and it’s a wide read magazine. Having somebody who is transgender writing about his or her experiences is really important in such a mainstream environment. I’ve had had lots of good encouragements and letters of support as a result of the first two columns and I hope that continues. 

What would you like to achieve with that column?
I’m now a part of the trans visibility in the media, which has grown a great deal in 2015. In a few years we probably stop talking about it and it won’t be such a big issue anymore, but right now it’s a central topic. By being an Elle columnist it will always be a reference to people who are feeling the same as I’ve been feeling. I hope that will be helpful. 

Next to being a writer you’re also a performance artist?
The reason why I’m a performance artist is because I really enjoy performing. There’s an essence of being extremely confident when I’m on stage and it feels natural to be in front of an audience. But I also enjoy writing. It’s new to me, and interesting because it sort of landed in my lap. It’s an opportunity that I don’t want to miss and I find it really important to be able to do different things in my life. This assignment is such a unique opportunity that I’d be foolish to turn it down. 

How does one become a performance artist? 
When I was younger I always knew that in some way, shape or form I liked being in front of a camera or on stage. Nevertheless it took me a long time to find the mode. When I was a teenager I joined bands playing rock music and it just progressed. After I finished university I got heavily into nightclubbing and expressing myself in terms of the looks I was creating. I designed these extreme characters, which lent itself really easily to being onstage, so it grew from there. It’s really interesting to create a fantasy persona and bring that to life. 

You call yourself a transitioning performance artist. Why is that an important word to add to the description? 
I’m born male and I’m moving towards something that could be labeled not male, and that’s a process. A process that enables me to draw on lots of experience to put into my work. In a sense everyone is transitioning, since we’re all growing and changing on an hourly basis, based on our experiences in life. We’re shaped by our reality and regardless or not whether you’re in transition, which I am as a transgender person, you still should be moving onwards with your work. So that’s why I say I’m a transitioning artist, because I’m doing a lot of transitions all the time. 

You know what the difference is between being a male or a female performer. Do tell! 
That’s true; I’ve had the unique opportunity to be living as male, and everything that entails, and as female. When I was performing as a male, I was more of a female impersonator and was creating characters that were more androgynous or a-sexual. Performing as a female felt I had to find that form on stage. It’s hard to articulate because I don’t know the answer, but there is definitely a difference. Nevertheless I enjoyed being on stage as a man, and I definitely enjoy being on stage as woman. But as to what people think that I am; it’s their thoughts, not mine. 

Do you care? 
Sometimes I do, if I’m having a bad day or when I’m feeling sensitive. But it stays somebody else’s opinion and it shouldn’t really be affecting your experience. If you let everyone’s thoughts about yourself worry you, you would never get anywhere. Especially when you are writing or performing because you are in a way opening yourself up for critique. And people will critique you, that’s part of life. You just have to be ok with it and let go, otherwise it can be demoralizing. 

Do you feel your life is balanced? Being creative and being in transition at the same time?
I have a lot of great stuff in my life that keeps me balanced. I guess from an outsiders point of view you think it’s heavy, but the everyday reality is one that’s quite comfortable. I’m able to except who I am and what I am. The confidence that I have is visible to other people so I don’t get many negative reactions. I haven’t always been surrounded by accepting people though; there was a time when my family wasn’t able to communicate with me because they were trying to adjust to the transition. And there were times when I felt very alone. But right now I have my family behind me, I’m having a fantastic relationship with a man who is very comfortable with who and where I am in my life and I have security in my job. Those are all things that help you stay balanced.

 

 

‘I decided to pursue the opportunity to write a column for Elle UK. Having somebody who is transgender writing about his or her experiences is really important in such a mainstream environment.’

This might be a weird question, but are you this creative because of the transition or would you be the same otherwise? 
I’d like to think I am. My creativity hasn’t changed because I’ve transitioned. If anything I think my creativity, my feeling that I need to comment on certain stuff has just exploded because of the transitioning. I’m coming to a place of trying to understand myself a bit more and allowing myself to be me. This way I can open other channels that were possibly quite closed in terms of my artistic endeavors. 

Do you have the feeling you have to start all over again? 
I do. But I think it depends on how you want to transition. When I was 30, I had to start all over again. I needed to create a new identity and because I already had a strong identity as being a male performer, it has taken me 3 years for that to change. But it’s exciting to create a new identity. You can change the narrative. I think that’s what some people can find difficult coming to terms with, especially your family. They have this idea that you’re born as a son and you are called Ryan and you will always be Ryan till you die. But then you turn around and say; “No, I’m not Ryan. I’m Rhyannon, and this is how I’m going to live my life”.  I guess that’s quite hard for people to come to terms with. 

Would you trade if it were possible? 
That’s a difficult question. Part of me want’s to say yes, but part of me wants to say no. Living as a boy for 30 years has been really valuable although there were both happy and sad times, which there are in everyone’s experience of life. But no, I wouldn’t change my life. I’m happy with living as a male and to some extent female, not much people have that opportunity. 

Do you need to have gender reassignment surgery, apposed to living your life as a woman in a male body? 
I grew up relating more to females and couldn’t really understand why I wasn’t able to do what my girlfriends did. I didn’t like that separation but I can understand the point of view you’re sketching. There are certain things in life I still can’t do because I have male genitals and that is annoying, but at the same time I still don’t know whether or not gender reassignment surgery is the right option for me. But I still have time to think about that. The possibility is very exciting but I don’t know how it will be in reality. It’s a strong commitment, and you have to be very sure about what you want to do. 

How can you be sure about something like that? Is it a feeling? 
I wouldn’t say I’m 100% sure, no. I’m more inclined to having gender reassignment surgery than not, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll definitely go ahead with it. Fortunately I don’t have to make that decision today so I’m not going to worry about that just yet. Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans woman and gay liberation activist from New York, once stated: “Nobody promised you tomorrow”. All I have is today and today everything is comfortable. 

 

www.rhyannonstyles.com

 

This article is featured in Et Alors? Magazine 16.

Read the complete issue here. 

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Et Alors? magazine. A global celebration of diversity.