DVAA Member since 2023
Blue Benét
WEBSITE: bluebenetart.com
About:
Blue Benét is a Philly-based, transmasculine, non-binary, t4t, interdisciplinary artist, educator, and writer. From handmade paper to encaustic painting, tufting, and bronze casting, they index transition through materiality in their sculpture, performance, installation, painting, and video work. Blue received an MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College in 2016 and is working towards their second MFA at PAFA, where they lead the Student Council, TA, and work in the metal shop. They were recently nominated for the Dedalus MFA Fellowship, and returned from residency at Art Farm in July. Blue will teach a queer environmental art workshop at Unirondack as an AIR in August.
Artist Statement:
My work explores queerness in and of the body through a consideration and diversity of mode, media, and material. I experiment with material that can index transness through shifted properties and representation: molten metals, textiles in fibres, spun, and manufactured forms, paint with different drying media, wax, and still and moving, molten, images. I consider the illegibility of internal time and lingual limitations in liminal text and framing. I am interested in trans representation in both classic and nontraditional canons, investigating how our portraits and bodies can occupy both narratives previously crafted to exclude us and in crafty spaces overlooked by capital-A Arts. I wonder what a portrait is, and work to trace and dissolve personhood and the body at once, documenting moments of ephemera through motions, memories, and montage. I lean into play as liberation, use my body to physically evoke pain and rage, and utilize a mis/new-understanding of media to connect to intuitive composition.
TLDR: My AuDHD and I demand a constant exploration of new media and modalities. I oscillate between play and frustration (and am somehow always late, behind, overwhelmed) and make trans work: trans work about how great it is to be trans and how terrifying it is to be trans and how beautiful all the trans people around me are and how beautiful all the people are who don’t realize how beautiful we are are and how hideous or how sad that they can’t accept our liberation because they refuse to be free themselves.
