Back to Exhibitions
The focus of My Final major was to create a trans retelling of the Hans Christian Andersons Fairy tale The Little Mermaid and adapt and illustrate the story to talk about transmasculine identity, gender dysphoria and trans joy. I wanted to use the work to illustrate my own experiences with trans identity and to discuss gender identity through the lens of a fairy tale. Within the original fairy-tale I found a plethora of visuals and motifs that pointed towards a trans reading of the text, and that I thought could articulate the feelings of gender dysphoria and identity in a way that would be accessible to a wide audience. I drew inspiration from traditional fairy-tale illustrations, such as the ones done by Walter Crane and Edmund Ducal for their renditions of The Little Mermaid, as I wanted my illustrations to have the same visual appeal and ornate details as old fairy-tale illustrations, but with an updated twist talking about a contemporary talking point. This is a project I would be interested in pitching to a publisher within the future.