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Transgender Lives and Eugenics in the Museum Space
About the project
This project explored the relationship between eugenics and transgender lives, identities, and transphobia, while championing and highlighting trans voices from within the UCL community and beyond.
The overall objectives of the project were to:
- platform and empower a community that has been the object of eugenic study via inviting its members to shape the narrative around themselves through art-making and community curation;
- champion transgender voices at UCL and within the museums and heritage sector;
- show how modern transphobic narratives have their origin in eugenic thinking and to contest those same narratives.
The project team took the approach of ‘nothing about us without us’ to facilitate dialogue and the outputs are trans-led and trans-affirming to create a safe space for participants and our community audience.
The project includes object handling and art-making workshops for trans* and genderqueer people to discuss how eugenics work at UCL has shaped current transphobic attitudes and informed the trans experience.
Project Facilitators
Aleks Jagielski
Aleks Jagielski is a researcher, writer, artist and archivist. He holds an MA in Comparative Literature from King’s College London and completed his undergraduate studies in Arts and Sciences at UCL. Aleks has spent a lot of his time studying and translating works of the transmasculine Polish poet and literary critic Piotr Odmieniec Włast, and is currently working on his first novel inspired by the same research.
Cerys Bradley
Cerys is an award-winning comedian, podcaster and writer. Their show Sportsperson won the Neurodiverse Review's Award for Actually Autistic Excellence in 2022. As part of the development of this show, they created the zine Sportspeople which showcased art exploring queer experiences of playing sport. They write about the history of scientific research on queerness and how and why we can approach it differently.
Read the full Co-Creation Project Report
Artwork
Model of internal and external genitalia | Jar of Areolas | Untitled (drawing) | Self Portrait | A box of my organs | Untitled (transness India) | Untitled (storage) | gender me now | Untitled (collage) | Entry #925 | Speculum for a Bring-Your-Own-Speculum Cervical Exam | Do not touch | Shattered | Stop testing me/I'm not done yet | Unboxing patterns | What’s a real boy / Sex characteristics / We are still unlearning | Curation
Aleks Jagielski, Model of internal and external genitalia, 2024
This is a model which intends to represent genitalia of indeterminate sex.
What is it made of?
Canvas board, pencil, tampon, red paint, white paint, condom, small rock, metal piece of indeterminate machinery retrieved from a river.
Object story:
I made this object to represent how I sometimes view and feel about my genitals, which I see as not clearly fitting into the binaries of “male” and “female”. Parts of the model are labelled with Latin names for parts of “male” and “female” genitalia.
Keywords:
Model, genitals, labels, binaries.
Cerys Bradley, Jar of Areolas, 2024
A small glass jar filled with disembodied plasticine boobs complete with tiny nipples. They come in a variety of colours including various skin tones and blue. There is an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque label reading EAT ME.
What is it made of?
The jar is glass and plastic.
The boobs are fimo clay.
The tag is cardboard and string.
Object story:
I was inspired by the clay and the little jar to recreate the iconic jar of moles from the Grant Museum. I enjoyed the process of rolling the clay to make the breasts and had fun using as many colours as I could. As a trans masc person, I have a complicated relationship with my breasts. I usually bind them but find that it has little effect on whether I get misgendered or not. Sometimes I wish I could take them off and keep them in a jar.
Keywords:
Boobs, breasts, nipples, jar, whimsical, clay, bodies.
Anonymous, Untitled, 2024
A drawing.
What is it made of?
Paper and wood, with pen drawing.
Object story:
I like to doodle like that and the text on it is a silly line that I think to myself sometimes.
Keywords:
Myopic, memory, paralysis.
Anji Suri, Self Portrait, 2024
A figure accompanied by its ‘self-portrait’.
What is it made of?
Toothpicks, aluminium foil, stickers, acrylic paint, googly eyes.
Object story:
I started with the figure. If I’m creating anything, I find myself making stick figures. The portrait came next – I liked the easel and canvas, so I filled it. I added the stickers in the colours of the nonbinary flag to really make the transness clear (if it wasn’t already!). If I really think about who I am and how I feel in my own body, what comes out is something close to this little stick figure.
Keywords:
Surreal, silly.
Aleks Jagielski, A box of my organs, 2024
This is a plastic box with small compartments filled with various objects intended to represent how it sometimes feels to be trans on the inside. I called it a box of my organs.
What is it made of?
Plastic box, paper tag, pen, black paint, red paint, cling film, rocks found in Hastings, dinosaur sticker, red paper, strings of blue paper, polymer clay fish, polymer clay boobs, polymer clay baby, wooden letters, broken toothpicks.
Object story:
I saw this box with compartments and I had the urge to fill them with stuff. I often have difficult feelings about my body and how it is perceived by others, and those feelings were more intense when I was younger. I made and collected small objects, including a smiling polymer clay baby laying on a rock, a polymer clay fish caught in a net, and a stack of boobs made from polymer clay. One corner is empty and painted in black paint, a pit of darkness I sometimes find myself in. The baby and the dinosaur represent the child-like parts of me, and the stack of letters say something about struggling with language to describe myself.
Keywords:
Organs, compartments, boxes.
Rie Raut, Untitled, 2024
A jar/bubble of Indian Sub-continent Indigenous Trans communities across India. The archive of oral history centuries old.
What is it made of?
Colourful paper representing transness in an intersectional way. Hijra (Muslim), Kinnar (Hindu), Jogati (Hindu) and many more Trans communities.
Object story:
A bubble showing intersectional Transness and solidarity, surviving, thriving, hiding, history, archival and Indigenous communities.
Criminalization and Transness, Queer sex, erasure, Trans God and Mythology.
Transness is very Non-binary in nature, and a third gender identity.
Keywords:
Hijra, Kinnar, Jogati, Criminal Tribes Act, Sc 377, Colonization, Gharana system.
Anonymous, Untitled (ACGT); Untitled (sniff me); Untitled (Shells), 2024
What is it?
- A jar of dna bases, partially obscured
- A bottle of fun
- Friends
What is it made of?
- Glass jar, pva, laser cut letters
- Poppers bottle, glitter, sequins, letters (LGBTQIA), label
- Shells, googly eyes, star sequin
Object story:
Thinking through what the act of collecting and preserving specimens does. How it limits, isolates, flattens, reduces, kills.
Keywords:
Jar, storage, eyes, acronyms, preservation.
Anonymous, gender me now, 2024
A human-esque polymer clay figure inside of a jar surrounded with several polymer clay genitalia in uncharacteristic colours for bodies (blue and red) that are separate from the rest of the body. The body itself is also convoluted, wrapped around itself and so also non-normative.
What is it made of?
Paper, polymer clay, glass (jar), plastic.
Object story:
Inspired by the preservation techniques used in museums, the object shows a ‘preserved’ (in a jar) human-esque figure without attached genitalia. Those are multiple and dispersed through the jar, in colours not associated with human bodies, inviting the observer to interrogate the relationship between gender and sexual organs/characteristics.
The presentation and preservation of this body also challenges the idea that trans* bodies are to be watched/observed/consumed.
Anonymous, Untitled, 2024
A collage of images of historical transfemininity.
What is it made of?
Card, address label, stickers, 3B pencil.
Object story:
This started with the image of the reclining ‘hermaphrodite’ and just grew from adding more found images and text.
Keywords:
Hermaphrodite, taxonomy, reveal, transfeminine.
Nastia Lvova, Entry #925, Dowell Research Library & Archive, 2024
Layered collage.
What is it made of?
Mixed media (cardboard, paper, pins, stickers).
Object story:
This is a photo of an archival (dismantled) exhibit in a future/parallel timeline of human identity/sexuality/whatever. The exhibit has been dismantled following public outcry! Now evidence is only accessible to researchers after filling out an inquiry form.
The object comments on the binary and hierarchical nature of contemporary narrative on queerness in the museum/archive. Curators/experts are still those deciding what to display/hide in the archive, what to flag as 'sensitive'/'unsafe'."
Keywords:
Eugenics, classification, categorisation, access, differencing, identity, representation, norm, LGBTQ+.
Aleks Jagielski, Speculum for a Bring-Your-Own-Speculum Cervical Exam, 2024
This is a plastic speculum adorned with googly eyes, pom-poms and gemstones. It’s your new best friend!
What is it made of?
Plastic speculum, googly eyes, paper tag, coloured markers, pom-poms, gemstone stickers, letter stickers, red foam, tape, rainbow fabric, “remain” badge.
Object story:
I made this object a couple weeks before I was scheduled to have my first cervical screening. I was very anxious about the exam and I bought a box of single-use speculums from a medical supply website so that I could have a better understanding of what was going to happen, and possibly try one out on myself! I found the object itself intimidating, scary and dysphoria-inducing. This was an attempt to make it more friendly and gender-affirming. It wears a “remain” badge that I found (I suppose that’s how it would have voted). As a side note, my screening went great and ended up not causing any dysphoria (I asked the nurse to play whale sounds from the computer while she did the screening).
Keywords:
Speculum, cervical exam, medical exam.
Cerys Bradley, DO NOT TOUCH, 2024
An A5 canvas with the words DO NOT TOUCH written in clay and then paper mâchéd to create a dull grey background and covered in stickers and sequins.
What is it made of?
Canvas, fimo, paper mâché, stickers and sequins.
Object story:
I hate it when you go to a museum or art gallery and all the objects are so tangible but you can’t touch them. I wanted to make something that looks very fun to touch and play with but is explicitly setting out boundaries because its tangibility is not for you, it is for it. I’m not super happy with how this turned out because I couldn’t really work out how to make it look nice so it’s a first draft. A bit like playing with self-expression for the first time in a new body.
Keywords:
Art, do not touch, touch, stickers, clay, play, canvas.
Becky Moses, Shattered, 2024
The object is a collage of images from Moth, particularly images of leisure and nature.
What is it made of?
It is made of shards of images of nature and the leisure activity of swimming. Brush strokes of paint are layered over the images, erasing edges and bodies.
Object story:
The image is a play on the term ‘shattered’ and describes the feeling of fatigue that trans people experience due to oppression, medicalisation, mental health and neurodiversity. It explores the boundaries around leisure activities that trans people might access to improve their wellbeing and physical and mental health. It shows how certain bodies are included from certain spaces.
Keywords:
Swimming, nature, health, wellbeing, trans, gender dysphoria, gender euphoria.
Anonymous, Stop testing me! / I’m not done yet!, 2024
An underbaked fairy cake angry at being tested with a knife with protest signs that read: “STOP TESTING ME!” and “I’M NOT DONE YET!”
What is it made of?
Paper, card, tissue paper, plasticene, felt, googly eyes, tinfoil, toothpicks, glue.
Object story:
Representing me as a pre-everything trans masc person trying to exist in a world that often vocally hates trans people. I am tested by misgendering and the vitriol in the news media. It shouldn’t hurt so much but it’s like being stabbed by a knife. I am angry and sad and scared sometimes and wish I could say ‘stop testing me!’ and ‘I’m not done yet!’ – I haven’t transitioned in the way I want to, but also, I’m not giving up – I’m just getting started.
Keywords:
Angry fairy cake.
Anonymous, Unboxing Patterns, 2024
Poster – mixed media, collage.
What is it made of?
Paper, mesh, thread.
Object story:
Breaking the grid and unboxing the mesh of expectations. The remainder of the pattern symbolises the voids that seem bleak. The colour green represents the underlying theme of being rooted to planet and the past. To top it all, ‘Dino with love’.
Anonymous, What’s a real boy / Sex characteristics / We are still unlearning, 2024
Three small panels:
- What’s a real boy
- Sex characteristics
- We are still unlearning
What is it made of?
Pens on canvas.
Object story:
Science is storytelling and my pieces tell tales both together and independently. The panels are a social commentary on how complex “sex” is.
Keywords:
Bodies, science, intersex, trans, sex, gender.
Bex Terry, Curation, 2024
A collage arranged like a butterfly display.
What is it made of?
Paper, magazine cuttings, pearl stickers to resemble pins.
Object story:
This object is a consideration of how curators influence how specimens are received by the viewer due to the choices made in the method of display. This leads into thinking about how our bodies and histories are curated and potentially misrepresented by historians, how certain body parts are more acceptable when presented in a certain way and not in others, the censorship and binarization of human bodies.
