About

My current research prepares ethnographic portraits of visual activists who create portraits of local trans communities of Berlin, Johannesburg, and Toronto. This chapter reflects on how negative affects surrounding gender non-conformity in conjunction with race and age becomes worked through in drawn and photographic portraiture.The chapter outlines how the project is situated within trans and critical race studies, explains the starting points within portraiture theory, and, along the way, introduces a selection of images from participating artists such as Del LaGrace Volcano, Elisha Lim, and Zanele Muholi. The chapter will also analyze ways in which the artists’ practices of collaborative portraiture negotiate the puncture wounds of stigmas, particularly around gender non-conformity in conjunction with racialization.