E-xalting grove, thriving for the days ahead

This series of works interrogates the multifaceted nature of transition, delving into both its structural and conceptual dimensions. The sculptures fuse themes of transformation, flux, and processuality, drawing upon the motif of alchemy as both metaphor and aesthetical vehicle. Although alchemy is often relegated to the realm of the obsolete within scientific discourse, its central pursuit of transmutation and metamorphosis remains an enduring and profound metaphor for human aspirations, as well as a potent lens through which to explore transformation in the context of identity.

Installation view at MIKRO Zurich

2025

Alchemy and its tendency to whimsical, unnatural and limitless creations inspired many stories and tales over the past century. In all of these, there is a kind of queer longing expressed; people who, like Shelley‘s Dr Frankenstein, want to create something new, a new construct of a new technology, perhaps in response to their own sense of loss or strangeness. In many stories, people are sculpted or formed out of mud or clay, before being given the gift of life by a benevolent creator. Stories of humans building their own contraptions and things that live, or seem to simulate life, are just as old. Alchemy, with its's oscillation between occultism and proto-scientific experimentation, serves as a metaphor for the concept of “transmutation.” It has always pursued radical transformations; turning metals into gold, discovering the elixir of life, or overcoming physical limitations. These ideas resonate with the experience of trans bodies nowadays: a continuous process of bodily and social mutation shaped by scientific agendas.

Our embodiment as transgender bodies is linked to the industry that produced hormonal and surgical sex reassignment techniques, which is no less pretentious, and no more noble, than that of past
alchemists. White male doctors still aspire to triumph over nature. The scientific field that produced sex reassignment techniques is inseparable from the pursuit of immortality through the perfection of the body, and the desire to create life itself. The cultural politics behind these aspirations are deeply conservative attempts to stabilize gendered identity in service of the ‚natural’ heterosexual, binary order. But the power of Transgender embodiment and transition is not found in ‚naturalness’ or linearity, but in the furious flow of constant movement forward. Unlike alchemy, which always aspired a final, perfected state of transformed entities, the true power of transition lies in its processuality, in its endless fluidity.

The materials I incorporate into my sculptures originate from everyday contexts, performing specific functions within the quotidian. However, through their reconfiguration within the sculptural form, these objects undergo a radical deconstruction. They are recontextualized within a queer framework that exists outside normative categories such as „useful,“ „logical,“ or „simple.“ By appropriating industrially produced objects, I subvert their conventional utility, creating space for alternative, non-hegemonic
perspectives. This disruption of their familiar contexts renders their embedded sociocultural markers before the viewer even recognizes what these objects originally were. In this reconfiguration, objects are no longer passive; they become sites of negotiation, resistance, and new meaning. This practice of appropriation and subversive reinterpretation is both empowering and transformative. By taking objects traditionally inaccessible to me as a trans body and inserting them into a new context, I reclaim ownership of them, situating them within a queer narrative of possibility. Within the sculptural framework, the material becomes a mutating body, a body in flux, in transition, and in perpetual transformation. This metamorphosis is akin to the lived experiences of trans people, to quote Paul B. Preciado, “I prefer my condition as a monster.”

The materials I work with are endlessly diverse, yet each material group evokes specific associations, imbuing the work with distinct cultural and historical resonance. Objects like chrome steel handles, shower pipes, and bike racks, relics of Western domesticity, embody the domesticated, heteronormative values that I aim to deconstruct. These objects, which once signified routine functionality, now speak to the rigidity of societal norms and the spaces they occupy. Similarly, sportswear (symbols of a performance-driven, masculine ethos) embodies the aesthetics I seek to critique. The very materiality of these items embodies a „masculine“ ideal that, when appropriated, is able to blur the boundaries between gendered form and value. The sculptures carry the narratives of different times and spaces, from the domesticity of the nuclear family home to the dynamic references of queer contemporary pop culture. In this way, they serve as a living document of transient moments. The mutating, monstrous body is not just a metaphor within my work; it is embedded in the very way the materials behave. Found objects are dismantled, reshaped, and fused together, losing their original context and taking on new, unexpected functions. Their instability echoes the experience of a body that refuses fixed categorisation, that moves between states rather than settling into one. Gender, like the materiality of my sculptures, is not a static entity, it is a process, a negotiation, an ongoing act of becoming.

„The monster is one who lives in transition. One whose face, body and behaviours cannot yet be considered true in a predetermined regime of knowledge and power. I prefer my monstrosity to your heteronormativity.“ – Paul B. Preciado