2017-2019 REBIRTH
CW: Artworks during this period feature reference to mental health and transgender lived experience.
Born in 1980, it took tjb almost 20 years to unpack the indoctrination forced upon her during the formative years of her life informed and conditioned through a law in the UK titled, Section 28.
Section 28 destroyed the lives of many young queers as it operated through the UK from 1988 until its final repeal in England during 2003. This period of time represented her entire primary, secondary, college and undergraduate education. It would dictate that State education should ensure that anything outside of heteronormativity was unacceptable by removing all reference to queer lives from the curriculum and withdrawing all pastoral support (in schools) for the mental health and wellbeing of young people in relation to LGBTQIA+ experiences .
For tjb this meant her own lived experience at this time dictated that anything other than cis male and female binary relationships didn’t exist in her primary, secondary or college curriculum. And the first meaningful representation only occurred at undergraduate level as the legacy of this law finally came to a close.
As a queer youth from a low-income, single parent cis-normative family, there was no one in the school system to educate her that difference was acceptable and importantly her cis hetero peers wouldn’t learn acceptance either!
It took tjb 20 years to unpack this assault of indoctrination. Almost dying prior to finally accepting who she was and it was only during moments of support and therapy in the years prior to her 40th birthday that she finally became comfortable with her identity.
Initially coming out as non-binary in 2019, using the pronouns xe/xem/xyrs until June 2024, her solo artwork during the period of 2017 to 2019 moved away from the explicit body-based actions of her previous period, granting her the opportunity to understand where she had come from, reframing her own archive through new eyes, re-examining her previous obsessions with the perception of being and a multiplicity of self/s afresh and re/embracing queer phenomenology through the evolution of her practice, research and authentic identity.
Born in 1980, it took tjb almost 20 years to unpack the indoctrination forced upon her during the formative years of her life informed and conditioned through a law in the UK titled, Section 28.
Section 28 destroyed the lives of many young queers as it operated through the UK from 1988 until its final repeal in England during 2003. This period of time represented her entire primary, secondary, college and undergraduate education. It would dictate that State education should ensure that anything outside of heteronormativity was unacceptable by removing all reference to queer lives from the curriculum and withdrawing all pastoral support (in schools) for the mental health and wellbeing of young people in relation to LGBTQIA+ experiences .
For tjb this meant her own lived experience at this time dictated that anything other than cis male and female binary relationships didn’t exist in her primary, secondary or college curriculum. And the first meaningful representation only occurred at undergraduate level as the legacy of this law finally came to a close.
As a queer youth from a low-income, single parent cis-normative family, there was no one in the school system to educate her that difference was acceptable and importantly her cis hetero peers wouldn’t learn acceptance either!
It took tjb 20 years to unpack this assault of indoctrination. Almost dying prior to finally accepting who she was and it was only during moments of support and therapy in the years prior to her 40th birthday that she finally became comfortable with her identity.
Initially coming out as non-binary in 2019, using the pronouns xe/xem/xyrs until June 2024, her solo artwork during the period of 2017 to 2019 moved away from the explicit body-based actions of her previous period, granting her the opportunity to understand where she had come from, reframing her own archive through new eyes, re-examining her previous obsessions with the perception of being and a multiplicity of self/s afresh and re/embracing queer phenomenology through the evolution of her practice, research and authentic identity.
