Artist's Statement

Matt Storm

Media: 2017 prints: Archival Dye Prints / 2018 prints: Archival Pigment Prints / Installed work: Dye Sublimation Prints on Fabric, Wood

Dimensions: All prints 12” x 18”. Larger installed fabric work varies.

Going For It - 90” x 24”
M for M - 60” x 47”
Protagonist Jump - 61” x 101” (wall space required for installation)

“Act of Looking" is a series of self-portraits that seeks to expand the lexicon of ways to see a body, inclusive of ways to see my body. I’m transgender, and I rarely see bodies like mine represented well in art. It matters that someone trans makes this art.

For this series, I return annually to the same studio in Provincetown, MA, using a tripod, a digital camera with a ten-second timer, and natural light. Some poses are physical, representing the body and its impact on self and experience. Other poses reference ways that US americans learn to see bodies, including classical sculpture, renaissance painting, sports, and advertising. My body is incongruous with the limited models these institutions provide, and really, all our bodies are. It is important to offer a more complex way to see bodies.

These images first existed as framed photographs, participating in the traditions of portraiture, documentation, and nudes. After showing these more widely, it became apparent that they needed to be bodies themselves, in the same room as the viewer and more complex to consume than an image alone, so I began creating human-scale fabric installations. By existing in real space, rather than as something to be observed in a frame, these installations embody the divergence between a theoretical identity, and the complex lived experience of a person in a body.