The more I enjoy and explore the meaning of duality in my artwork—light/dark, soft/hard, comfort/pain, pink/blue—the more I come to understand myself in non-duality.
There are many practices and philosophies that recognize that the universe is composed of two opposing yet interconnected forces. You can’t have light without the dark—they exist as one.
For me, I find that’s true in being queer—nonbinary. My gender identity is not exclusively male or female—interconnected and interdependent, the boundary between male and female is blurred, a conceptual construct. I exist as one.
Duality and Non-Duality is an exploration of opposites with my gender. Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s in a Polish Catholic environment, a queer vocabulary, it’s meaning and the discussion was non-existent. Girls and boys were defined as pink and blue.
I disliked girl’s pink bathrooms and questioned why I couldn’t use the blue ones.
I disliked girl’s pink bathrooms and questioned why I couldn’t use the blue ones.
After creating these two portraits, I realized a third portrait is needed in the middle—a sort of middle way.
