In celebration of 2022 CU Pride Fest, Artists’ Alley is pleased to bring back this popular show that first appeared in September 2021. This encore exhibit features pieces not previously on display. So whether you saw it last year or missed it, there’s something for here for you!
To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interview with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults
Opening Reception: September 29, 2022, 4:30 to 7 PM
Exhibition Run: September 29-November 18, 2022
To Survive on This Shore (TSOTS) is a project by Jess T. Dugan and Vanessa Fabbre. Representations of older transgender people are nearly absent from our culture and those that do exist are often one-dimensional. For over five years, photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre traveled throughout the United States creating TSOTS. Seeking subjects whose lived experiences exist within the complex intersections of gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic class, and geographic location, they traveled from coast to coast, to big cities and small towns, documenting the life stories of this important but largely underrepresented group of older adults.
The featured individuals have a wide variety of life narratives spanning the last ninety years, offering an important historical record of transgender experience and activism in the United States. The resulting photographs and interviews provide a nuanced view into the struggles and joys of growing older as a transgender person and offer a poignant reflection on what it means to live authentically despite seemingly insurmountable odds.
Jess T. Dugan is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photography, video, and writing. Dugan’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of over 45 museums throughout the United States. Dugan’s monographs include Look at me like you love me (MACK, 2022), To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015). www.jessdugan.com
Vanessa Fabbre is a social worker and Associate Professor at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is also affiliate faculty in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and a faculty scholar at the Institute for Public Health. Fabbre received her AM and PhD in social work from the University of Chicago. Her work explores the conditions under which gender and sexual minorities age well and what this means in the context of heteronormativity, heterosexism and transphobia.
Media Coverage
Smile Politely (9/29/2022): You Belong Here and the art of Pride
The Daily Illini (10/1/2022): Artists’ Alley highlights transgender representation through photography