Intersex Awareness Day Spotlight
October 19 – November 2nd, 2020
Online
In honor of Intersex Awareness Day (October 26th), Gender Unbound is hosting a spotlight exhibit of the intersex artists from our recent Virtual Showcase on the theme of “Home.” View the work below in an interactive 3D gallery. If you would like to learn more about intersex people and the issues that they face, visit interactadvocates.org.
The gallery is free to the public to view, but we do encourage viewers to tip any artists whose work you enjoy. Tipping and art purchase information can be found in the individual artist pages below. Tips go directly to artists and art sales support Gender Unbound and our programming.
NOTE: This event is over, and the interactive 3D exhibition has ended. Click on the artist pages below to see artwork from the show, purchase any artwork that didn’t sell during the show, and tip artists from the show.
Free delivery inside the continental US for art purchases. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that Gender Unbound is volunteer-run, we are not offering expedited shipping and are estimating 2-3 weeks for the art to arrive. Please keep this in mind when purchasing.
All tips go directly to the artist. Proceeds from art sales go to Gender Unbound. Please support your favorite trans and intersex creators by tipping them. By purchasing art, you are supporting Gender Unbound, a nonprofit project, and our mission to uplift, support, and advocate for transgender and intersex communities through arts and programming created by transgender and intersex people.
All of the art in this showcase was commissioned and is currently owned by Gender Unbound. Artists were paid for the creation of their work by Gender Unbound and were able to name their own price for the commission of their work within a price range. Purchasing work from this show does NOT transfer any copyrights or reproduction rights to the customer. The artist retains all copyrights to their work and reserves the right to reproduce and sell copies of their work if they see fit.
Mari Wrobi
Nonbinary
They/Them/Theirs
Mari Wrobi is a queer, transgender and intersex person of color born and raised in Sacramento, California. They currently work at the first and only shelter for LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness in Sacramento; intern at the Gender Health Center; and advocate with interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth. Outside of their advocacy, Mari is also a short-film director, a photographer, and a spoken word artist – with most of their art centering the LGBTQ experience.
https://mariwrobi.myportfolio.com/
Instagram: @genderfenderbender
Twitter: @intersExist
“Stalled” by Mari Wrobi
Set of three pieces, unframed.
19.5 x 13 inch (h x w)
Photography on Paper
Artist Statement:
As a visual artist, I often turn to photography as a means to express my identity and my history. My piece for the Gender Unbound Visual Showcase 2020 is three photographs that describe my “home”. When I think about what “home” means to me, it’s impossible to forget the time when everything I owned was stored in a car that was permanently parked on my college campus. For nearly two years, a concrete parking garage was what I considered my home.
I was kicked out of my mom’s house at twenty years old – and although it never truly felt like a home to me, it was the only place that I ever had to turn to. Though she and I eventually worked through our problems and became cordial with each other, this event permanently shifted my perception of “home”. Even now, with a bed and an apartment to come home to at the end of the day, I think of myself as not having a home. I constantly feel like there’s no place where I belong. Most people can turn to their family for support or the house they grew up in for comfort. For me, home is only what I can carry from place to place – and I’m worried that’s all it will ever be to me. Still, I hold space and softness in my heart for the home I was forced to create when I had nowhere else to turn.
Tip the Artist:
Venmo: @mariwrobi
Purchase the Art:
$450.00
OUT OF STOCK
Jeanne Nollman
Intersex female
She/her
I am an intersex artist, with a concentration on pottery and and sculpture. Growing up intersex as a teen and adult, comes with confusion, anger, violations, secrecy, and lies. I try to incorporate my masks with these emotions. I usually do not plan my masks, but let my hands do the thinking and talking. I am usually surprised by my work, and people are sometime a bit disturbed by my work. Some say it’s dark. I am a retired Probation Officer (I did the sentencing reports on the defendants for the high profile transgender murder of Gwen Araujo), and am an intersex media person, an activist, and an educator. I am also a mother of two adopted children and am married.
https://www.facebook.com/JeannesPotterySpot/
Instagram – @nollviscreations
“Intersextastic” by Jeanne Nollman
One piece, no frame needed.
12 x 12 x 3 inch (h x w x d)
Clay Sculpture and Crystal glazes
Artist Statement:
I create art to lose myself completely, only to rediscover who I am at the end of the project. Being an Intersex Artist, I draw on my experience of having female and male sex characteristics that don’t fit into the binary. Essentially, my art is an opportunity to explore being different. Reactions to my work range from, “That’s cool”, to “That’s dark and scary”. My work is provocative, eclectic, quirky, and unpredictable, a lot like me.
Although much of my work is functional pottery (hand thrown on potter’s wheel), creating masks is an exploration into my subconscious, a mystery. I love the idea of taking a piece of clay from the earth and molding it. I allow my fingers to do what they want, pressing and pulling in a feverish manner. I live to take risks in combining colors and crystals in my glazes, the results often a surprise. Life is like an experiment, why shouldn’t my art be too?
Tip the Artist:
Venmo: @Bob-Davis-65
Purchase the Art:
$600.00
1 in stock
KOOMAH
Genderfluid
Any pronouns
Koomah is an intersex and genderfluid multidisciplinary artist, performer, actor, filmmaker, educator, former sumo rikishi and pet parent to cat Manba who does tricks. Koomah has performed, lectured, and screened films across the US and internationally.
Instagram – @_koomah_
“Home is a Children’s Hospital” by Koomah
One piece with a four-page poem, unframed.
16 x 20 inch (h x w)
Mixed Media on Canvas With a Poem on Paper
Artist Statement:
For intersex adults who have experienced invasive forced medical interventions, it is common for a significant portion of their childhood to have been spent in medical settings such as a children’s hospital. My work titled “Home is a Children’s Hospital” is a re-examination of this experience as storytelling told through a single visual artwork and an accompanying poem. The multimedia visual artpiece utilizes imagery of an intersex adult’s actual childhood medical records juxtaposed beside both medical supplies and children’s toys and stickers to represent the medical community’s attempt at the normalizing of these traumatic experiences for intersex children. The accompanying text is an amalgamation of 3 intersex people’s experiences turned into a fictionalized poetic story utilizing the medical records presented in the visual artpiece, the recalling of my own experiences with forced invasive exams in childhood, and an intersex adult’s anecdote of the day they acquired their own medical records. This piece is a way to provide an adult understanding and voice to our child selves in an attempt to challenge the current and former medical models of care for intersex people, educate the viewer, and incite an outrage that may develop into active allyship.
Tip the Artist:
Venmo: @Koomah
Purchase the Art:
$600.00
1 in stock
Valtinen
Intersex, genderfluid transman
He/him
I am an intersex+genderfluid performer, model, and artist. With intense gothic sensibilities and a deeply rooted dramatic streak, I wear horns most of the time, am affectionately called “Beast” by my loved ones, and attempt to illicit the discomfort of nonconformity both in person and artistic expression.
http://www.facebook.com/graveglamour
Instagram – @graveglamour
“The Art of Survival” by Valtinen
One piece, no frame needed.
13 x 11 x 19 inch (h x w x d)
3D Mixed Media
Artist Statement:
Personal growth and self-discovery require discomfort. If the place and people where you are supposed to find encouragement, support, and acceptance make that journey more difficult, that discomfort becomes dangerous and disturbing, halting progress and reverting to fundamentals of continued existence. My work examines the nature of deception as survival in a place of perceived shelter when the safety that shelter should offer is compromised. I use masks to illustrate the roles we often must play to protect ourselves. The eyes ensure our adherence to those roles and the mirrors continue to reflect the performative aspects that conceal our rich interior lives.
Tip the Artist:
http://paypal.me/valtinen
Purchase the Art:
$575.00
1 in stock
A. S. Koi
Intersex
They/them
Interdimensional naturalist A. S. Koi is also the driving force behind dark artist outlet, “Catalyst Studios”, founded in 1999.
Changing the world, one monster at a time.
http://www.moritorium.com/koi
Instagram – @annskoi
Deviantart – @vektar
“Endless Hours” by A. S. Koi
One piece, no frame needed.
6 x 6 x 6 inch (h x w x d)
Sculpture and Assemblage
Artist Statement:
“Endless Hours” spawned from a continuously evolving series of miniature environments begun around 2015. These “pocket universes” or “icons” are imagined through an interactive, organic process of collecting remnants and giving them new life and stories. Said scraps (rescued from sources as diverse as beach bonfire refuse, thrift outlets, or closet purges) inform the sculptural and narrative process at least as much as the artist’s interior dialogs. In this mission to spare a few objects an unnecessary trip to the land fill, new purpose and personalities come to light, healing trauma through whimsy, curiosity and reflection.
Tip the Artist:
Venmo: @Ann-Koi
Cash App: $annskoi
Purchase the Art:
$300.00
1 in stock