Exploring diverse identities through art can be a powerful way to enhance awareness, foster empathy, and deepen our understanding of the world. Here at the GVSU Art Museum, we strive to include artists from every background to show how art can reflect views in society and the lives of varying people and cultures. By understanding our differences, we seek respect for ourselves and others.

March 31st, Transgender Day of Visibility, is a day to celebrate the lives and contributions of trans people while also drawing attention to the poverty, discrimination, and violence the community faces. Transgender Day of Visibility was first created in 2009 by Michigan-native and transgender activist Rachel Crandall Crocker and later proclaimed in 2021 by President Joe Biden, the first president to issue a formal presidential proclamation recognizing the event. This recognition brings visibility to the transgender community and a day to advocate and educate the public on the ways trans people have been mischaracterized, stereotyped, and misrepresented.

Like many institutions, the GVSU Art Museum recognizes a gap in the representation of transgender artists and voices in our collection. We strive to represent all individuals and commit to better representation in our collection. This year, we share a few of those stories but vow to share many more in the future.

Anna Campbell’s mirrors with sandblasted text and images were designed to be exhibited in bars and other public spaces to closely resemble promotional materials and material culture that a viewer may be familiar with in those spaces. While they can easily pass as a decoration, each mirror breaks down the narrative of an LGBTQ+ historic riot, raid, or sit-in. By breaking each story into individual images and words, Campbell highlights stories, legends, and facts from each event. The mirror shown above tells the story of the 1969 Stonewall riots, a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid that took place the morning of June 28th at the Stonewall Inn, an LGBTQ+ bar, in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

Explore more artwork by Anna Campbell.

John Gerkin’s Celebrate People’s History poster showcases the story of Sylvia Ray Rivera, a Puerto Rican and Venezuelan transwoman and civil rights activist from New York City. Rivera, who identified as a drag queen for most of her life and later as a transgender person, was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, two groups dedicated to civil rights and ending sexual orientation discrimination.

Explore more artwork by John Gerkin.

Andrea Narno is a queer Mexican printmaker living in New Orleans, Louisiana. They believe in art as a tool of transformation, contributing to social change during these uncertain times. Narno’s prints often include plants to convey ideas of feelings and to explore topics like migration and grief. For this image, they envisioned a nightscape of blooms and dreams, shooting stars, and pollen flying free within the harsh environment in which we live, surrounded by transphobic policies and regulations over our bodies. Through this, Narno reminds the viewer to defend our dreams, ideas, fantasies, communities, and visions at all costs.

Explore more artwork by Andrea Narno.

Andre Perez is a Latinx transgender filmmaker, educator, and community organizer who centers his artwork around collaborative storytelling with people of color. The poster he created for the Celebrate People’s History collection represents the Compton Cafeteria Riot in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, California. The riot occurred as a response to the constant violent police harassment of trans people, particularly of transwomen and drag queens. These individuals would take refuge in Gene Compton’s, an after-hours cafeteria, until the owner began harassing them with discriminatory policies. The transwomen and queens formed an organization, Vanguard, to fight for their rights until the owner called the police to evict them. They fought back, and a street riot broke out. Preceding the infamous Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969, this was one of the first LGBTQ-related riots in United States history.

Explore more artwork by Andre Perez.

Starting in 2003, Dutch photographer Sarah Wong followed and photographed the lives of cross-gendered children. She was invited into their homes, schools, and daily life activities, proving they were children living the lives they had always wanted. These images were the first official photos of transgender children from the Netherlands. In 2018, fifteen years later, Wong began to re-photograph these children as they entered adulthood, a continuing key step towards destigmatizing transgender individuals.

Explore more artwork by Sarah Wong.