balance & unease

Inspiration for my paintings in the OUT OF BOUNDS show.

— By ANDREA KASPRYK, Agitator Co-founding Member —

After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2013,            

…with a Bachelor of Arts Degree (BFA) in painting and drawing, I hoped to make a series of interconnected paintings about transgender subject matter, but I instead ended up making individual drawings, prints and paintings about this theme, not managing to figure out how to create a series until 2020 whose point of departure initially seemed to be yet another one-off project: a painting of a modified symbolic flag combining transgender, LGBTQ+ and anarchist elements for the AnySquared Against Da Fence outdoors group show in June 2019. I sketched and painted in acrylic one such design on a recycled political campaign sign, but I only managed to complete a quick version of this sign after the show opened.

Still, I was eager to follow through on my project and redo it on a larger scale, so I outlined a larger, more elaborate and ambitious alternative transgender anarchist flag design on canvas. Yet I realized as I was close to finishing the outline that I did not feel personally invested in this project. Oh, no, I thought to myself, “Is this yet another dead-end painting project that is not going to work out?!” So, I asked myself, “What would I really like to do?” Introduce a small transgender figure into the flag, was my answer, but this turned out to look awkward. So, I gave up on the transgender anarchist flag idea, but I decided to make a new painting with a large scale transgender figure in the center of the composition, and I kept one element from my transgender flag design—the snake).

Initially, I considered the transgender figure holding a Rod of Asclepius (a snake wound around a staff), which has become a well-known symbol of healing, but I thought this came across as too predictable. (I did pursue this idea in a large drawing, and the drawing seemed to have some promise, so I started to make an oil painting based on it, but it did not prove effective, so I gave up on it, though I eventually came around to making my biggest two paintings of the series in a modified version of my large drawing, The Ouroboros paintings.) At some point, the idea of a person holding a poisonous and dangerous snake, but not fearing it came to my mind, and this idea led me to start the first painting in my transgender series that I named Facing Stigma.  

As I worked on this painting, the notion came to my mind that it could serve as the starting point for a series of paintings. In a second painting, a matching figure in the same squatting pose would face backwards, which I called The Lonely Anarchist, and this figure could hold an anarchist flag. Thus, my initial starting point for this series, the flag image found its way back into it. While I was working on these two paintings, the idea of adding a third painting, Unease in Balancing Gender, came to mind to show a figure in a different and more dynamic pose and in an imaginary scene seated atop a giant snarling mask; this painting  would have more elements to it as opposed to a stark and simple background of the other two paintings. In the painting Unease in Balancing Gender, I relied on a previous image I had already painted years ago in art school: a small egg tempera painting of a figure seated with soles of their feet touching one another with their legs forming a diamond shape (a Bhadra Sana, that is, a cobbler’s pose in yoga) and holding a ball overhead with a yin and yang design on it. In the egg tempera painting this figure sits above tree roots shown in cross section, but in the oil painting, I changed this element to a large, scary mask.

Facing Stigma

For the painting Facing Stigma I took delayed release photos of myself to serve as the nude figure model. One notable influence for this painting were the figurative paintings of Kerry James Marshall, who has depicted nude African Americans in iconic poses, such as Black Star 2, Frankenstein, and Bride of Frankenstein. In Facing Stigma I present a nude figure in an imaginary scene calmly holding one diamondback rattlesnake, while another snake approaches from below. This scene symbolizes the end of my own struggle against transgender and sexual stigma, internally and externally, before and after my gender transition. This stigma is symbolized by poisonous snakes, who no longer provoke my intense fear and avoidance. The figure’s squatting position also symbolizes the challenge of facing stigma: this position strains one’s legs and back, which makes it difficult to hold for a long time. The two snakes with their distinctive diamond patterns add a diagonal element to the otherwise primarily vertical composition, and their color is repeated in the background in order to unify the painting’s color composition.

A cultural symbolic association of the snake with evil, which begins with depictions of Adam, Eve and the Serpent, and finds its titillating, decadent image expressed in symbolist painting is Franz von Stuck’s painting Sin (1893) featuring a nude woman, who both tempts a viewer, yet repels them because of a large snake that suggestively winds around her body—this snake image is one that I dissociate from its femme fatale association with women. The allure of a feminized and originally male body is not enhanced by the snake, but rather perhaps like some viewers seeks to hold the snake at least at arm’s length distance.

The Lonely Anarchist

In The Lonely Anarchist I present a nude figure holding a red and black anarchist flag facing an empty and wide horizon alone. This scene reflects my past child- and young adulthood when I hid my transgender self and took an oppositional stance to a world which did not have a place for people like me. It also represents literally how I became an inner immigrant, in many ways detached from the world turning my back it: I feared allowing people to get too close to me as I hid my transgender identity. After I came out, I began to find solidarity with others and with groups. The composition in this painting is stark and simple, conveying my uncompromising anarchist oppositional stance to the world in the past. The yellow sky in this painting echoes a background color from its partner painting with a figure facing forward.

Unease in Balancing Gender & No More Sacrifice to the Gender Polarizing Monster

In Unease in Balancing Gender a nude figure sits on top of an oversize, enormous snarling mask-like structure illuminated from within with a strong yellow glow. In the painting, the yin and yang ball held by the seated figure represents a cultural model of an ideal gender balance and calm that for me was elusive striving to attain; hence, it is being cast down into the maw of a monster who symbolizes rigid gender codes and norms.

I realize that the yin and yang concept in Chinese thought represents a notion that opposites can interact and coexist in a complementary manner within oneself and with another person; thus, integration of gender and personality can ideally be achieved. Yet in our Western culture, a normative and binary model of sexuality and gender of masculine men and feminine women still predominates, which does not provide for nor include variations to it. Furthermore, on an individual level, though the model of complementary model of yin and yang may be an ideal, in practice, social convention and pressure to conform to cultural normative models of masculinity and femininity for men and women remains quite powerful. Thus, a strong stigma remains in force for feminine boys and men or for masculine girls and women. For many individuals who don’t believe they can fit into the cultural model of normative gender, in trying to be someone they are not, or in the struggle to assert themselves as someone gendered differently, needless harm results.

The giant mask I created is perhaps partly inspired by my memory of the Moloch featured in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, but the image I held in my mind as I painted was of an enormous jack-o-lantern carved out with sinister, angry facial features and illuminated from within with a strong light. The irises of the eyes on this face with a narrow oblong shape are similar to a snake’s eyes, and the sharp teeth those of any predator. The mask’s nose-like structure resembles a pair of legs and feet with a giant nose or phallus between them, which alludes to the issue of gender raised in the painting.

In second version of the Moloch sacrifice scene that I named No More Sacrifice to the Gender Polarizing Monster, I decided to vary some of its elements: putting for example, the figure holding the yin and yang ball in the same squatting pose as the figures in the other two paintings, making the giant mask more three dimensional and complex with a second pair of eyes, which I associate with a pinball game. Also, in terms of a title, I use a term gender polarization, that is, the notion that masculine and feminine in our culture are set up as opposites, as an either/or dichotomy and binary with no middle ground. Such a model encourages emphasizing some masculine, if one is man, or feminine, if one is woman, traits of behavior and appearance, while minimizing those of their opposite gender. Such emphasis can result in gender polarization. For many men and women, they may find this model works for them, and carry on with their lives, but for others, nonbinary and transgender individuals this model does not.

Moloch’s mouth features a pair of human legs descending from its top, thus the notion of this Moloch as a consuming monster of humans becomes more explicit. Also, I provided background elements above the mask, elongated oval forms, which contrast against the Moloch’s angular teeth and eyes. Making the Moloch mask more complex in the second version may have blunted the powerful and more direct impression made by the simpler first version I realize, but at the same time I was curious to see the result.

Playing Catch with the Yin and Yang Ball

As I worked on my initial series of paintings, the notion of expanding it with more paintings that retained its ideas, but included showing two figures, as opposed to a solitary figure. So, I worked on some preparatory drawings, which included squatting figure throwing the yin and yang ball, but throwing it to another figure prepared to catch it. Initially I struggled with what sort of background to use in this painting. I could not really figure an appropriate one out in my drawings. In my painting, I added trees, but they seemed too conventional and did not convey any significant meaning: they just filled in an empty space with conventionally decorative landscape elements. Eventually I added a halo of intense light around the figure in the distance throwing the yin and yang ball to their partner, and this radiant halo reinforced the painting’s meaning: friends or lovers can overcome and ignore the limitations of gender binary categories, and simply enjoy one another for who they are. This is a genuine blessing; hence, I introduce the warm halo.

Still I add what can appear to be the outline of a snake behind one figure’s back. On a formal level, this symbolic image links this painting to Facing Stigma, and it links this painting with a recurrent symbol within the series. My sense is that forming an intimate bond and relationship does much to help dispel the noxious effects of stigma that can limit an individual’s personal development. Still, when differently gendered people form intimate relations, one of them may still be more prone to the residual effects of their past gender stigma and past normative gender conditioning.

The Yin and Yang Ball Game Turned Upside Down &
Another Sacrifice on the Tip the Gender Polarizing Monster’s Tongue

My giant mask or Moloch paintings got positive feedback from viewers when I posted them on social media, and I was curious to explore variations of this image, so I decided to make different versions of them in new paintings. I worked on four preparatory drawings in graphite, and I also made color versions of them. Two of these drawings I used as paintings, and I stayed fairly close to the original drawings.

To my surprise, one of the paintings, The Yin and Yang Ball Game Turned Upside Down, turned out to be much lighter and more playful than I expected, and this outcome pleased me. For it could be regarded as a complement to the scary and violent paintings with the large mask. These paintings can also imply that paranoia regarding adherence to gender categories has been overcome. It no longer constitutes a threat to one’s personal integrity, but is something that can be joked about.

A second painting, Another Sacrifice on the Tip the Gender Polarizing Monster’s Tongue proved to be more ambiguous: both sinister and playful, as seeing a human body on a large tongue of frightening monstrous feline face or mask implies its end is near. However, the bright colors in this painting work against perceiving it as very sinister.

The Dark Awakening Diptych

While working on the Facing Stigma painting, I thought over the fact that I was presenting myself and the transgender experience from a position of strength and success, as opposed to weakness and vulnerability. As a result, I decided I address the theme of vulnerability in two related paintings. In these paintings, I continued the practice of showing a figure in the same pose from the front and back, and used different symbols with each one. In these two paintings, Dark Awakening at Dawn with Owls and Oaks and Dark Awakening at Dusk with the Goat, the figures do not hold onto any symbolic objects to show their strength, but rather grasp at the edge of the oval forms in which they are enclosed as a result of fear. For what I meant to convey in these paintings was the isolation and fear resulting from the awakening of sexual feelings in adolescence. Likely this is a difficult, if not traumatic time for most people in our society because there is no formal or ritual cultural initiation into this physical and psychological phase of sexual development. The figure enclosed within this sphere represents the fearful period of isolation that can result during sexual awakening, which thus becomes a dark one.

From my personal perspective this adolescent phase of sexual development was isolating because I feared to share my experiences, as well as terrifying and traumatic, especially because I felt so vulnerable sexually: as an adolescent boy, who experienced a strong sexual, physical compulsion to adopt what I perceived as a woman’s conventional receptive sexual pose and role.

As a source of solace and affection and escape in their dark sexual awakening, especially if they cannot trust their family or friends, a shy and introspective adolescent may turn to the worlds of nature, animals, and fantasy and science fiction. And all these elements find a place in my two dark awakening paintings. Perhaps the spectacular cover art that could be found on the covers of paperback fantasy and science fiction books that I read as an adolescence also reveals its influence in these two paintings.

The Trans-Vitruvian Figure Series of Paintings        

My series of Trans-Vitruvian figure paintings began while drawing and trying to generate more ideas for variations of the Moloch painting in preparatory drawings. In one of these drawings, I drew a figure that was standing victorious within the mouth of Moloch, as if reborn in its fiery maw, as opposed to being a victim or sacrifice consumed by the monster. Since this idea and image did not resonate to me, I decided to put the same figure into a somewhat different imaginary setting. I started out with several sketches in which only a remnant of the Moloch’s eyes remains, and I placed the figure standing between two giant yin and yang balls, implying they have transcended gender struggle and dualism. This sketch modified a few times served as the basis for the painting Transcending the Gender Divide: Putting an End to Gender Polarized Struggle.

Then I made three more sketches in which I show the human figure in different settings of the natural world. In a second sketch in this series, one figure stands in front of a forest temple-like structure, whose keystone is crowned with a bronze owl, which became the painting Finding Knowledge and Self-Understanding in the Forest Temple. In a third sketch a figure stands between two rows of pine trees, which became the painting Desire Awakening at the Evergreen Spirit and Body at Dawn. Finally, in a fourth sketch, a figure stands on giant acorns in an underground area shown in cross section with trees roots spreading from three trees, which became the painting Finding Strength in the Infinite Spirit of the Oak Tree

In these paintings, I strove to convey affirming, heroic images of a transgender person's dignity and strength, and in part, I did so to provide thematic balance and contrast to my darker and more ambiguous paintings devoted to gender. For creating such thematically idealized and compositionally straightforward, centered, symmetrical paintings, I can imagine the sort of criticism I would hear in an art class critique when students share and discuss their work. For the only ambiguity that some viewers may find in these paintings is the question of whether the figure is a man or woman or both or simply to be left as an issue that is indeterminate and undecided. And this ambiguity is heightened by adding loin cloths that hide the figure’s genitals.

I also had some fun with these loin cloths, making them a bit silly with an arrow and triangle element added, as if to say, well, there’s the cover up you wanted, but it will be an ironic one! At the back of my mind also the plan to propose these paintings as possible public large murals prompted me to cover them just a little bit.

Leonardo DaVinci in his ink drawing named The Vitruvian Man solved the problem of showing how within a circle the midpoint of a human figure is found at the navel only when its arms are extended upward level at its head crown, while its legs are spread widely apart at shoulder width within the circle's circumference. He also determined that a human figure's center point shifts to the pubis when the figure is placed within a square: the legs are close together and arms parallel to its shoulders. By superimposing two figure poses with differing arm and leg positions, Leonardo revealed a mistake in the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius' claim that center point of a human figure is at the navel within both a circle and a square.

Since the circle symbolizes the spirit, the infinite, divine and sky, while the square, the physical body, the finite, secular and earth, showing and combining both geometric forms of an equal size to display ideal human proportions was important to Leonardo, because it reveals an underlying unity between the human spirit and nature. Also, Leonardo's Vitruvian figure shows his belief that an individual human being represents on a smaller scale the entirety of universe, or a human is a microcosm (small cosmos) of the macrocosm (large cosmos).

Looking at adaptations of Leonardo’s famous drawing by modern artists, I saw that they put women in place of Leonardo’s male figure, so I decided to add transgender and gender ambiguous figures in my paintings. 

– ANDREA KASPRYK, Agitator Co-Founding Member

website: andreakaspryk.com • instagram: @andreaalewise • e-mail: agitatorgallery@gmail.com

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Paintings Referenced: 

—The FACING STIGMA Series:
Facing Stigma, oil on canvas, oil on canvas, 40” x 30”, 2018–19
The Lonely Anarchist, oil on canvas, 40” x 30”, 2018–2019
Unease in Balancing Gender, oil on canvas, 36” x 24”, 2018–2019
Playing Catch with the Yin and Yang Ball, oil on canvas, 40” x 28”, 2018–2020
No More Sacrifice to the Gender Polarizing Monster, oil on canvas, 34” x 20”, 2020
The Yin and Yang Ball Game Turned Upside Down, oil on canvas, 36” x 24”, 2020
Another Sacrifice on the Tip of the Gender Polarizing Monster’s Tongue, 40” x 30”, 2020
The Ouroboros I, 54”x 26”, 2021–2022
The Ouroboros II, 42” x 36”, 2021–2022

—The DARK AWAKENING Series:
Dark Awakening at Dawn with Owls and Oaks, oil on canvas, 28” x 40”, 2020
Dark Awakening at Dusk with the Goat, oil on canvas, 30” x 40”, 2020

—The TRANS-VITRUVIAN Series:
Transcending the Gender Divide: Putting an End to Gender Polarized Struggle, 44” x 30”, 2020–2021
Finding Knowledge and Self-Understanding in the Forest Temple, 44” x 30”, 2020–2021
Finding Strength in the Infinite Spirit of the Oak Tree, 44" x 32", 2020–2021
Desire Awakening at the Evergreen Spirit and Body at Dawn, 44" x 32", 2020–2021

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