TRANSCRIPT
HOST: Feminism over the years has covered issues and injustices of women. However, in recent years, trans women have become more and more visible in society. With that rise, comes the same dynamic and issues that women face which are equality, respect and justice. Trans liberation is a new movement taking form even in artistic ways.
Jaki Johnson reports.
JOHNSON: A new exhibit opened last night of paintings at the Andrew Kreps Gallery on W.22nd Street in Chelsea. L.A. based artist Andrea Bowers has a new exhibit that focuses on feminism from the eyes of a trans woman, its called “Whose Feminism Is It Anyway”.
BOWERS: All my work is about documenting activists and using my artwork to create an archive of political activists of our time who I think are doing really amazing work.
JOHNSON: The 10 paintings in the gallery, showed trans women in different poses – with weapons. One has a gun and one has a hammer.
BOWERS: Every time a Trans woman is murdered because they’re killed for just being who they are. They are the most at risk community in the United States.
JOHNSON: She says she wanted to portray Trans women as powerful. It was important to show them as ready to fight.
BOWERS: They are all political activists, their all like really amazing activists who all do really strong civil disobedience protests.
JOHNSON: Bower’s student Addy Tinnell helped to develop the exhibit. She’s a Trans women who hopes that traditional feminist will embrace Trans women.
TINNELL: In an ideal world, of course we wouldn’t need Trans feminism or intersectional feminism, it would just be feminism.
JOHNSON: Tinnell wants people to know that Trans women and feminists have more in common than you think. They share a similar interest in the organization Planned Parenthood.
TINNELL: A group like Planned Parenthood their not well known for this but they provide the most services to Trans gender in the country.
JOHNSON: The exhibit will be up until the end of March. Bowers says that she will continue to work on this theme.
BOWERS: I am trying for the rest of my life to create representation of women in action and to show their intelligence, their actions, their politics and their beliefs.
JOHNSON: Bowers says that beauty belongs to all women; those born as a woman and those who become a woman,
Jaki Johnson, Columbia Radio News.
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