The Brooklyn Rail

To me, radicality is not fixed. It changes according to the situation and context. It often relates to standing up for what you believe in, even when it goes against the status quo, depending on where you are and the circumstances. It might sound cheesy, but I really feel that love and the betterment of humanity are part of radicality. Being radical is about caring enough to insist on that.

As a trans woman of color—our life expectancy is a lot lower. So for me, radicality is fighting for our humanity and existence. For people to understand that we have a right to exist just as much as anyone else in whatever space we’re in. We have been excluded from art history, and from cultural, social, and political life for a long time. I do not expect perfection from the few trans politicians or leaders who make it into these spaces. I know what it takes to get there. Simply being present, visible, and able to exist there at all is already radical.

For me, a big part of this was protesting. I know that sometimes protests are seen as not actually helping the cause, especially from a distance. But for us, being out in the streets gave us a platform. It allowed us to understand that we were of the same mindset on some level, and then to go back into our own fields and try to change things from there. I remember marching with other trans women who had no weapons, no protection, nothing to defend themselves, and watching police brutality up close. I was dragged by the hair. People were pummeled. Cars drove into protest groups. It felt like everywhere you turned, there was danger.

Still, we stood there. We faced something that felt inevitable—something we were expected to accept—and we said no. We believed so deeply in our right to exist that we were willing to fight for it. For me, that was one of the most radical experiences of my life: seeing trans bravery not as an idea, but embodied, in real life.

At the same time, radicality now feels very strange. We live in a moment where being against genocide is considered radical, which is mind-boggling. Wanting people to live, to stay where their families have lived for generations, to eat, to sustain themselves—these things are now framed as extreme. When I think about trans rights, I think about how the struggles of all those who are being violently erased are connected. It’s wild that we’re in a time where something we thought we all agreed on—that human life is valuable—is suddenly up for debate.

I think about this a lot through what my father taught me. With his Indigenous ancestry, he instilled in me the importance of respecting nature—Mother Earth. This place is a gift and an entity in its own right, and we are responsible for caring for it. For me, radicality is also about that relationship: recognizing the energy around us, how we draw from it, and how we give back.

In my own practice, radicality feels inevitable. It feels built into me. I’ve learned to lean into what I believe in, into what I stand for, and into my intuition—even while questioning it and trying to understand where it comes from. If something is part of my expression, then it’s because it’s deeply part of me, sometimes on the surface, sometimes much deeper. And that inevitably enters the work.

Art became where I could speak, even when I felt voiceless—when I was hiding, or still finding myself. It was a space where possibilities existed that I could not find elsewhere. Art can move into science, technology, social work, and care. It has limits, of course, but it is not bound by the same rules as most professional fields.

When I first started transitioning, I worked in social services with Translatina Network, supporting trans people in my community. Later, when art invitations came, I refused to leave that work behind—I carried it into the institution. We organized HIV testing inside museums. We built private, protected spaces. We made counselors available. I also made work about blood-donation bans: my own blood was displayed in a gallery because I was not allowed to donate it. These were residues of the AIDS crisis, still shaping policy—and stigma.

At the time, I remember asking curators, “What about care?” and getting blank stares—as if care had nothing to do with art. That made me realize that this was exactly where I needed to work. Art could gather resources, visibility, and money, and redirect them toward community care. Through art, I’ve been able to support trans people financially, to help careers develop, especially for those who didn’t have access to university or traditional pathways.

So for me, radicality is not abstract. It’s embedded in lived experience. It’s about insisting on humanity, care, and survival in a world that increasingly treats those things as optional. It’s about using whatever space you’re in—art, protest, community—to make room for others to exist.