"My self-portrait was taken as one of many lighting tests for my 'trans people are sacred' series, which I started in response to the ban of the conversion therapy in 2022 which excluded trans people. As I work by myself, my face is often the only option to experiment with. I was trying to use light to create some form of movement, distortion and glitch to make the point that identity is not something that is fixed, and to evoke the feeling of fragility and surreality as the rights of trans people and their lived experience are constantly questioned and under threat. In juxtaposition my defiant gaze is an act of resilience. We have always been here and we always will."