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In his bio, film and video maker Chris Vargas lists "imperfect role models" as a thematic interest in his work. Keeping this in mind seems key to engaging in Vargas' latest projects, the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art (MOTHA) and 2013 MOTHA Art Awards (full disclosure: Visual AIDS is nominated for Archive of the Year). As Vargas discusses in the interview below, both the museum and the awards invite conversation around ideas of legitimacy, and recognition.They also make space for new and engaging work to be discovered while commenting on who can make art and be engaged in culture, and who cannot; the last two awards on the online nomination ballot are "Unrecognized Artist of the Year, Hermit" and "Unrecognized Artist of the Year, Too Busy Surviving".
Visual AIDS: What led to the creation of the Museum of Transgender Hirstory
& Art?
Many things led me to begin this project. First is that, to my
knowledge, a museum devoted to transgender art and history does not yet exist
in the U.S. I know so many talented transgender artists, many of whom are not finding
sufficient support for their work. I started to imagine a platform that would highlight
these artists and offer them the legitimacy that many of them (not all) are
looking for. At the same time, a museum is the most fraught institution
imaginable. Its history of racist, patriarchal exclusion and colonialist exploitation
runs deep. I also wanted to tackle the issue of composing narrative history:
what would a trans cultural history look like that is both cohesive and
expansive?
In case it’s not clear, MOTHA is a conceptual museum that occasionally manifests materially. It’s also designed as a work of institutional critique. I’m aiming to create a project that validates and upholds the work of trans artists, our visual culture, and activist history, while also encouraging us to be critical about the conventional ways of doing so.
Visual AIDS: In starting the museum—and as someone with a deep history in
critical and radical queer politics—what are some of your thoughts around the
possibility of “creating a canon” or “institutionalizing” transgender hirstory
and art?
Early on, I realized that by creating a semi-fictitious “museum” I
could also address the issues of canonization and the legitimacy that
affiliation with such institutions inevitably bestows on the artists who are exhibited
there. I’m critical of creating a canon, but I also have a deep investment in
the work of transgender artists, so I wanted to attempt to make an inclusive
canon while remaining critical of the process. I realize “inclusive canon” is
an oxymoron, but I think there is something rich about attempting to make
something that is, by its very definition, hierarchical into something
non-hierarchical. The creation of a canon is a political act, and there are
always oversights and strategic omissions, but I wanted to attempt the process anyway.
This is not a project about asserting inclusion; instead, it’s about creating a parallel to popular art culture—the same way that many projects of 1970s cultural feminism did—but in order to both parody that mainstream culture and to understand why we’re so attached to it.
Visual AIDS: Who are some of the people and/or what are some of the
institutions you look to as models for what MOTHA can do?
I’ve been looking to the collaborative art trio General Idea and
their 1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion, Tom Marioni’s Museum of Conceptual Art,
Giuseppe Campuzano’s El Museo Travesti del Perú, the Museum of Jurassic
Technology in Venice, CA, Bigfoot Discovery Museum in the Santa Cruz mountains,
Ann Cvetkovich’s Archive of Feelings,
and the Transgender Living Archive in Los Angeles. Also, of course, Visual AIDS
for its 25-year history of sustaining conversation around the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Visual AIDS: There is a lack of conversation around HIV/AIDS and transgender
lives. Why do you think that is, and what role can art and hirstory play in generating dialogue?
There is a lack of conversation about HIV/AIDS in general. I think
many people in the U.S. think HIV/AIDS is over, or at least “manageable,” or that
it is something happening in Africa and not a problem here anymore. But for
marginalized people, like poor, POC, trans people, HIV/AIDS is still an issue
that must be addressed. I admire Visual AIDS for the dialogue it sustains
regarding HIV/AIDS, the impact it still has on our communities, and its
rhetoric in mass media and popular visual culture. For future MOTHA programming,
I plan to use you folks as a model for engaging in that conversation about
HIV/AIDS especially as it relates to other systems of violence and negligence.
Visual AIDS: The MOTHA award nominees are now online. Tell us about the
process.
I have solicited the input of the larger queer community, both IRL
[in real life] and online, for a few projects associated with the museum: the
promotional broadside and the 2013 MOTHA Art Awards. For both the MOTHA
broadside poster collage and the Art Awards, I invited people to submit names, theirs
and others, of artists whom they believe are making an impact on the trans
cultural landscape. The result, both times, was an extensive list of names for
the poster and nominees for the awards, which I did not edit in any way, and which
serves as an incredible snapshot of trans visual culture, and trans hirstory,
as it is looks right now–according an extended network of friends and
acquaintances. The Art Awards component of the MOTHA project is a cooptation of
award competitions in all their inherent flaws, and one can easily read the
ambivalence to such structures written into the very text of the nomination and
voting forms. It is not my intention to pit people against one another—participation
definitely requires humor and good sportspersonship—but I put full trust in the
community to engage with the process appropriately at every step: in
nominating, in researching every single nominee on the ballot, in voting, and
in receiving news of the award winners. Right now we are in the voting phase of
the awards, which is also a chance for people to engage creatively. For example,
Canadian nominees Morgan Sea and Raphaële Frigon, created graphics that
resembles a presidential campaign bumper sticker but utilizes the transgender
pride flag in place of the US flag. Hilarious!
Visual AIDS: How does something like disclosure – a term
used a lot in the context of HIV/AIDS – relate to goals of cohesion and/or
expansion for MOTHA and the awards? Thinking here of figures on the poster and
nominees that may not be, or identify as trans, (such as Visual AIDS programs
manager Ted Kerr, nominated for Trans Historian).
MOTHA’s
Mission Statement maintains that “the museum insists on an expansive and
unstable definition of trans and gender non-conformed art and artists.” This
means that MOTHA takes an inclusive approach in highlighting cultural figures
who explicitly identify as transgender or gender-variant, real and fictional
people whom we look to as models of identification and disidentification, as
well as figures in hirstory who
predate the terms altogether and who may or may not have found refuge in this
category had they been alive today. The promotional broadside illustrates this
range and in doing so reveals a vast and complicated trans visual culture, as
well as a suppleness in the terms that makes them hard to pin down. In relation
to the awards specifically, the voting ballot shows a completely unedited list
that includes every single nominee submitted during the nomination phase of the
awards. Rather than verify the transgender identity of every person nominated,
I have full trust that the community of voters will make the most informed
choice for each category.
Visual AIDS: Your work is consistently good and bringing together humor,
politics and complexity in a way that is engaging and fun. Give us some tips?
Just the tip [insert stock
photo: head of dick]. Kidding, thanks so much! I guess my real tips would be, keep
company with funny and politically engaged people. Don’t be afraid to get
things wrong, and always maintain your own artistic integrity.
Learn more about MOTHA and the awards: MOTHA.org
Vote for the MOTHA awards: Nominations