Part of the magic of portraiture is how it renders so much of the human experience accessible to us, things we might never see otherwise. This has been very much on Black artist Amy Sherald’s mind. When I spoke to her in advance of the debut of her exhibition American Sublime, she told me that Black representation was foundational to her practice: “I developed this idea that, when I look at art history, for the most part I don’t see portraits of people that look like me. So it started there.”
That exhibition’s curator, Sarah Roberts, also spoke about Sherald’s passion for representing the LGBTQ+ community: “Amy has thought a lot about her role as an artist and the need for representation, and she has long been a champion of LGBTQ+ rights. This work is thinking about who gets depicted as being American.”
It was no surprise, then, that Sherald would have a very strong reaction when the Smithsonian attempted to censor Trans Forming Liberty, a portrait that she made of the Black trans woman Arewà Basit, out of American Sublime in advance of its arrival there. As Sherald told the New Yorker: “Trans Forming Liberty challenges who we allow to embody our national symbols – and who we erase. It demands a fuller vision of freedom, one that includes the dignity of all bodies, all identities … This portrait is a confrontation with that truth.”
More than just censoring Trans Forming Liberty from American Sublime to appease the Trump administration, the Smithsonian added insult to injury when it suggested that Sherald replace her artwork with a video of cisgender people debating whether or not trans people deserved inclusion in American society. The artist lost no time in responding to these actions by pulling her show from the Smithsonian.
The skirmish over Sherald’s piece highlights the importance of trans representation in the artwork that hangs in our museums and galleries – a 2022 Pew poll found that less than half of Americans believed that they had ever met a trans person, meaning that seeing representation such as Sherald’s might add a dose of empathy and connection to a community that is in need of compassion from cisgender Americans. At the time when the trans community is being demonized with the fervor of a moral panic, it is no exaggeration to say that such encounters are transformational.
The Bay Area trans artist Éamon McGivern has made trans portraiture central to his artistic practice. His collection, Still Lives, a Trans Portrait Project, was recently shown in the Tenderloin Museum in San Francisco as a tribute to his connection with the trans community.
McGivern was appalled, although not surprised, at the idea that trans people are now being erased from museums with strong ties to the federal government. “We’re at a point where you can’t show a picture of a trans person at a federally funded institution and that’s bad, that’s fascism,” he said. “If cis artists are being asked to edit, what does that mean for queer and trans people?
He awarded Sherald points for understanding the importance of representing trans people in her art. “Since Sherald’s an artist of color, I’m sure she has to think these issues through more than the average person. The fact that she cares enough about trans people enough to include them in her body of work means that she gets it.”
While showing his work, McGivern has frequently seen cisgender people have to wrestle with their preconceived stereotypes around who trans people actually are. “The response I get from cisgender people is that they didn’t know trans people looked like that,” he said. “And that really opened my eyes, where I’m like: ‘Wow, people have such a narrow view.’ That we can just be normal people living normal lives.”
McGivern sees trans portraiture as far more than just a way of acquainting cisgender viewers with the trans experience. He shared that his series of portraits of trans people came out of his own experience of isolation after undergoing gender-affirming surgery: “I lost my housing during recovery from top surgery,” he said. “I looked around, and I realized that I didn’t have any capital T trans people in my life. I needed trans people around me who got it.”
Painting portraits of trans people became a lifeline at the very time he needed it: his art helped him build exactly the community he was in search of. “I started reaching out to people who I thought were cool hot trans people. I wanted to show portraits of people who were not alone and in community. Reaching out to people who seemed to have that in their lives, showing that in my art was subconsciously a way of getting that for myself.”
Like McGivern, Atlanta artist Sean La’Mont began creating trans portraits as a way of being in community. She recalled that in 1997 she began to frequent drag clubs and was astonished by the beauty of the trans women who danced there. “I thought: ‘Wow, these are amazing people!’ and it was that curiosity that started me drawing them.”
La’Mont’s years of drawing the trans community have brought her into contact with some astonishing trans people, including surgeon Dr Marci Bowers, who is considered one of the top vaginoplasty surgeons in the world. La’Mont recalled that at a trans health symposium in Atlanta she got the chance to come face to face with a personal hero – and draw her portrait.
“I was invited to do a show with the Trans Symposium, and Bowers happened to be the guest speaker that year,” she recalled. “The event organizers asked me to draw her, and then they presented it to her at the event. She was so gracious about it. She’s been an idol, she’s pretty incredible.”
For La’Mont, it’s the love of her community that has kept her inspired to draw portraits of trans people for decades now, something she’s eager to share with the cisgender population. “Art reflects how people live and love, and some of the greatest pieces are the ones that show how we live and love. I see their reaction, it’s like: ‘Oh my God, that’s beautiful.’”