This risograph print echoes the design of my hanky for Queer Ecology Hanky Project. It depicts some of my “greatest hits” of queer ecology inquiry, having one big celebration together. These dance moves are both hetero and homosexual courtship activities of peccaries (riding), aperas (rumba), pukeko (allopreening), and European shags (throwback display), as well as long-eared hedgehogs (sliding). My exploration of these mammal and bird behaviors are part of a decade-plus investigation of biological exuberance, a term coined by Bruce Bagemihl in his paradigm-shifting 1999 book by that name. I have been learning from and working with this book for a long time. I designed the triangle of oyster mushrooms in the center on Transgender Day of Remembrance/Resilience 2019. I added “resistance” because I like the alliteration of these three words together, and I want to uplift how trans and gender nonconforming folks give everyone a more expansive possibility to transcend hetero and gender normativity and binaries. Mushrooms also resist binaries – neither plant nor animal, with their own special magic, and are to me the ultimate symbol of interdependence and resilience.
I printed these at Eureka! House while there in Summer 2021 for a Queer Ecology Hanky Project-themed residency, where co-organizer V Adams and myself hosted other artists for a month and created an artist's book that expands upon the themes of the project.
