"Henri as Joe' has, like me as a gender transcending trans person and artist, transitioned over time to come to its current meaning and title. It has many interwoven dimensions which are all important. It was originally 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.
In 2024 I got commissioned by Stonecrabs Theatre Company to create the key artwork for 'Joe Carstairs', a play about a queer speed boat racer, raised as Marion Barbara Carstairs who self-identified as Joe.
The company then made the decision to use my self-portrait instead as they were drawn to the image to reflect Joe. Suddenly the photo and myself became a 21st century version of a queer gender-nonconforming person who was experiencing their own identity vs. social construct struggle almost a century earlier. As the play gently poses the question of how Carstairs might have identified if they had lived in this day and age, I became an embodied idea of possibility which gives the surreal utopian feel of the image a new meaning. I feel very honoured to be 'the face' of someone/something as I'm usually hiding behind my camera."