Annual Cull

Annual Cull acts as a physical tally of transgender lives lost due to hate crimes and violence in 2023 and 2024. Thirty-five vessels are hung on the wall to represent the number of murders in 2023, but ten are missing, alluding to the murders that have taken place this year. The floor is scattered with an unknown amount of broken vessels in various states of ceramic maturity. They reflect the trans lives lost that were not reported and those lost to suicide. The vessels themselves are modeled after my medically transitioned body, in doing so, I have put my own fear -and that of many trans people- in the forefront. Some vessels are “tattooed” with creatures associated with vermin. These beings are often exterminated, stepped on, and seen as others; an unfortunate connection to the way society treats trans people. Their stigma is forever carved into these vessels, yet they wear them proudly. They are adorned with trapped carbon due to their reduction firing, an embodiment of time and physical change. The title serves as a reminder of the hunt put on trans people by heinous politicians, anti-trans laws, and rhetoric. By forcing the viewer to step on the remains of the broken vessels, they must come to terms with their own complacency in the attack on trans people in the U.S.