THEY POWER.
Performance artist, writer, public speaker.
Jamie Windust explores the power of the non-binary community as they introduce us to seven fierce trailblazers.
Jamie Windust: For gender non-conforming (GNC) people our aesthetic and gender expression is super important for us and our existence. What tips would you give someone who wants to explore their femininity in a safe but carefree way?
Alok Vaid Menon: Gender expression is relational: often times it takes affirmation from other people to help femifest ourselves. There is no way I could be the person I am today if it wasn’t for other people rooting for me and being there to process the grief of harassment. Both friendship and performance have been some of the few spaces where I was encouraged and supported to experiment with my gender. So I would su¦est exploring around people close to you who do not couple your appearance with your worth.
JW: How do you find the response to your work when you’re performing in India compared to NYC and throughout the US?
AVM: Certainly geographical and cultural context has bearing on reception, but I actually find that each audience (even within the same city or country) is enormously different from one another. The nature of my work is visceral and it depends on the energy in the room – a willingness to be vulnerable and encounter contradiction. So often times it’s about what people are going through in that given day – their heartbreaks, their loneliness, their fear – and that really sets the tone and shifts the mood more than anything. That being said, I have to say that the UK is one of the most difficult places I perform. The emotional repression: unparalleled.
JW: I remember working with you last year and your words really stuck with me when you spoke about the hypocrisy of self-care and who actually needs to be doing the work to prevent us from having to constantly have to come up with coping mechanisms. Can you explain this further?
AVM: So often people call transfeminine people ‘strong’, ’brave’, and ‘inspirational’, without questioning both why we should have to be constantly resilient and what they are doing to challenge the conditions that are destroying us. The onus is always put on the person enduring the crisis to somehow selfie/love their way out of it, rather than on other people to just stop our plight. I want another way of relating where we are doing reciprocal care work for each other, one in which we are figuring out more kind and interdependent ways of coexisting, recognising that mental and physical wellness aren’t individual shortcomings, but rather collective concerns.
JW: What are your goals for 2019 for you and the trans/GNC community?
AVM: Ambition beyond recognition. Defy easily consumable narratives. Be gnarly and ruthlessly indigestible. Be myself even when it hurts, especially when it hurts. Recognise that there are many ways to be as there are people in the world, and that is our strength. Most of all: demand a total and fundamental rethinking and undoing of the gender binary.