Inspiring collaborations: March 31st is International Transgender Day of Visibility. This year in Washington DC, artist Cassils presented “Etched in Light.”
Performers and participants in ETCHED IN LIGHT BY CASSILS, National Mall, Washington D.C., Trans Day of Visibility, March 31, 2024. Performance still. Photo by Ashley J. Mitchell.
Etched in Light is a participatory visual art and sonic performance led by Cassils in collaboration with the National Center for Transgender Equality and over 140 trans and NB artists. Pushing back on the politics of visibility in a moment of heightened violence, collectively, we called upon the imagery and affective energies of lie-ins, die-ins, and the historic NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt to claim space for our trans and gender expansive selves, transforming the National Mall into a site of beauty.
The campaign served to center the performance in a larger context of the partnership with NCTE and QEI, while furthering Cassils’ engagement with questions of trans* visibility: exploring abstraction as a tactic of refusal from the enforced spectacularity of trans* bodies in a moment of heightened violence. During a moment of increased political erasure, Cassils creates an empowered representation of trans solidarity that intervenes in this politically charged and increasingly polarized battleground environment while simultaneously refusing the surveilling and voyeuristic gaze leveled at trans bodies.
Cyanotype is an early form of cameraless photography that relies on fabric or paper coated in light-sensitive chemicals exposed to sunlight. Here, Cassils invited trans and queer participants to imprint their bodies on one of the largest cyanotypes during this participatory performance on the National Mall.
Cassils told Hyperallergic, “[We are] trying to think of a formal language that speaks to the problematics of this idea of purely representing; thinking about how trans bodies are often seen under a voyeuristic or surveilled gaze…The performance was really coming up with a visual language that denies that kind of invisibility.”
The performance featured vocal invocations and musical scoring by Blood is Here (Carmina Escobar, Roco Córdova, and Dorian Wood), highlights Black trans femmes with poems and music by Michael Love Michael, and includes speeches by NCTE’s rally participants Hope Giselle and Angelica Ross. The performance is linked to bodily autonomy through Viva Ruiz and Thank God for Abortion. Etched In Light is a part of Cassils’s body of work Human Measure in collaboration with choreographer Jasmine Albuquerque and dancers Jas Lin, B Gosse, Canyon Carballosa, Kaydence De Mere, and formerly Alucard Mendoza. Human Measure is produced by Farihah Zaman, Courtney Cook, and Buffy The Slut. Etched in Light is part of the In Plain Sight feature documentary directed by the brilliant PJ Raval and edited by Jason Chen @jch.edit and Lucas Ward.
A two channel installation of Etched in Light, made in collaboration with Arshia Haq, will be part of Cassils’s solo exhibition, Movements, opening at SITE SANTA FE, Nov. 15, 2024. Additionally, LACE has selected Etched In Light for this year’s Artists’ Film International (AFI’24), a touring film program which is collectively curated and presented by fifteen international arts organizations and convened by Forma. AFI’24 introduces the work of talented moving image artists to worldwide audiences, and will be live over 300 days, with exhibitions, screenings and public programmes hosted across four continents.
This year the AFI partners have commissioned or selected recent artists’ films which respond to the theme Solidarity.
CHRA proudly co-supported this art action. Cassils was a guest speaker at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts in Spring 2021. You can read their full transcribed talk, “The Struggle For/The Struggle Against” in “Book 1 of Talks on Human Rights and the Arts: Through the Ruins.”