Art has been a part of senior Anika Nyman’s life since they could remember. Nyman is an art and narrative studies major, and through art they have been exploring storytelling and advocacy these past few years.
The LGBTQ+ community, especially trans and nonbinary people are marginalized, misunderstood, and in turn face disempowerment and lack of autonomy over their own bodies. For example, trans community members in the U.S. face anti-trans legislation that prevent them from having access to gender affirming care.
There are other ways in which trans and nonbinary identities are disempowered, and one of those ways is representation in art.
Nyman noticed a serious lack of representation of queerness within art. The little representation there was of queerness, specifically the nonbinary community, was still so binary and stereotypical.
“Photography or painting of nonbinary people emphasized gendered characteristics,” said Nyman.
Specifically, the nonbinary community often faces inaccurate portrayal. For example, people portray all gender conforming or nonbinary people as androgynous (indeterminate gender) or as overly sexual.
As someone who is nonbinary, it’s frustrating to continue to be looked at in terms of other people’s perception or comfort.
“My identity is so much more than what my body looks like or how my body can be perceived,” Nyman added.
So they married the two and began to tell stories about queerness. Most recently, they’ve been working on a project titled “Disembodied Portraits” of which they invited myself and USC alum Yessi Piña.
Piña studied geodesign and is also an artist. Growing up, they fell in love with the challenge and the creative endeavor of art. As they got older, they began to see it more and more as a tool to learn more about other cultures, people and places. They also saw how important representation was in art.
“It was a super big thing for me when I started to see art including Black and brown bodies,” Piña said.
This extended into their art and queerness. Piña saw the same underrepresentation and misrepresentation in art as Nyman. So, Piña began to welcome queerness into their art, something that was always there, but now intentional.
“I find myself gravitating towards art that blurs the line and pushes the boundaries of what is socially acceptable,” Piña said.
They especially wanted to pursue art that worked towards decentralizing the body or sexualizing it in an empowering way for trans, nonbinary, Black, and brown bodies. That’s why when they heard about Nyman’s project, they decided to participate.
“I am something worth being captured,” Piña said.
Disembodied Portraits was Nyman’s way of rejecting how their identity and the identity of so many other people was being portrayed.
“I wanted to see if I could represent people, especially nonbinary people, in a way that was not objectifying,” Nyman said.
As a femme presenting nonbinary person, Nyman’s project was appealing. For once, I wanted my body to stop being a thing for others, so along with Piña, I joined the project.
We each were painted full body by Nyman and laid on a 6-foot tall canvas. Imprinting our bodies onto the canvas was a way to be represented by an essence/abstract rather than the body itself, “[the whole process] shows that bodies don’t have to be sexualized,” Piña said.
After posing, Piña felt that they were a part of the process of making the art. “It was an expansion of my own relationship with my body,” Piña said.
The fear of perfection caught up to me when it was my turn to lay on the canvas. I wanted to make a perfect representation. In the end, it wasn’t perfect; it was me. An abstract version with long limbs and two heads.
It was the first time my brown, queer, femme, nonbinary body was my own.
That is the power of art.