Salix Hjerrild

@salixsalixsalix

Trans joy and hope, us kids, us raising our own, us raising each other and ourselves, imagine limitlessly and unconditionally. Who gets to be here? What do you get to do? What do you get to touch? Who can you love? And hold, and be with? Who do you see yourself as? Who are you in the future? What does it look like to be happy? To feel joy? We hold on, take care, giving it so much.

As I come closer to home, I remember doubting what family could look like. If they do not exist, if they cannot be stable, if we are incapable of nurture, why should I let myself feel like we do give love and can be loved. I am pulled back in.

This is only for you. I hold memory and the fragmented nostalgia that gives old stories weight. I like to tell stories repeatedly, I like to carry them around, sharing them when they are needed most. I remember once, I jumped off of a blue threadbare couch, dysphoric as fuck, candy in my fists, into the new year with all these older queers. Nade was there. I stood really still, watching them scream louder than the fireworks, yelling ‘AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN.’ I was so full of thick rage, but Nade would just impromptu cut mango and jump taller in the air than they stood, sometimes splitting themselves open when they landed. I have learned how magic and abundant and indulgent and zesty it is to be so full of potential and possibility. To expand so much bigger than was ever expected of you.

Beyond representation, Trans people deserve complexity, nuance, multifaceted narratives, lives, names, stories. Protecting means it gets painted into existence, spoken as truth, shared, disseminated, seen. It means bodily autonomy, coded gestures, secret names. I am jumping up, no longer worried about what will spill out, unclenching my fists, remembering what is real, that I can love profusely, knowing I might split open.

One figure looks directly at the viewer, turned to the side, and only their right hand is visible. They are painted in orange and red tones, and the background is white and orange.
Love Letter
2019
oil on canvas
5” x 21”
One figure looks directly at the viewer, turned to the side, and only their right hand is visible. They are painted in orange and red tones, and the background is white and orange.
Protect/Self Portrait
2020
oil and acrylic on finished plywood
12” x 27”
Eight figures with short hair, painted in a range of pink and purple tones hold one another and play. There are thick yellow lines in the top half of the painting behind the figures. Many of the figures have scars from top surgery.
Trans Kids Only
2020
oil on canvas
3 ½’ x 6 ½’
Two figures stand together. The figure on the left has their hand on the figure to the right. A purple cloth-like object hangs behind them, and in the background is a pattern of blue shapes. Birds hover to the right of the figures.
Staying Safe in the Blanket Fort
2020
oil on canvas
3’ x 3’
One figure painted in grey tones stands, facing and looking to the right. There is a mass of green, orange, pink, purple, and red foliage in the right corner, and blue shapes coming from the left of the canvas. There is a grey shadow in the bottom right. The background is a light blue tone.
Her Er Jeg
2020
oil on stretched canvas
3’ x 5’
A figure outlined in white moves to the left of the page. The background is black, and there is a thin white border.
I AM DRESSED UP, I AM LIVING VIGOROUSLY, I WAKE UP FOR YOU, NADE.
2020
ink on paper
5” x 7”
A figure in a red shirt grabs another figure wearing yellow whose face we cannot see. Two figures below them embrace, and to the left, two figures kiss under a pink blanket with stars. There is a grey/blue table with two brown mugs to the right, and blue drips around the figures. The background is a red and purple tone.
I Am Pulled Back In
2020
oil on canvas
4’ x 4’

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back to: 2020 Undergraduate Scholarship Exhibition