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Beyond Our Bodies

Mini is a Blak queer crip non binary person from Melbourne, living on Wurundjeri land. They perform as the solo hip hop artist Racerage, do spoken word and visual arts. "When I was way younger I went on dates with a bro who mansplained to me what a femme was, and he was telling me that I was a femme, that femme didn’t have to have long hair etc. That just really pushed me away from identifying as femme for so long. I wasn’t gonna let this bro dictate my gender. So people were constantly assuming I was femme, adding me to online femme collectives. Being femme is subversive and intentional but not necessarily aligned with being cis femme. It’s an intentional celebration of queer femininity and I felt like this person was telling me I was a lady! I’m not a girl, I’m not a lady. I’m a creature and I love feminism but I’m not a girl. » Mini Photo by Su Cassiano/Middle East Images/ABACAPRESS.COM

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A Brighter Summer Day

A Brighter Summer Day tells intimate stories from the LGBTQIA+ community in Taiwan in the period leading to the legalization of same sex marriage and its aftermath. In 2017, the Taiwanese government declared it unconstitutional to exclude same sex couples from marriage giving Taiwan two years to vote for the bill and dividing the country. 7 millions people voted against. On the 17th of May 2019, same sex marriage was legalized, Taiwan becoming the first country in Asia to do so. Nevertheless inequality continues regarding adoption or marrying a foreign person, to name a few of the remaining issues. Stigma and stereotypes are still attached to same sex relationships, even more so regarding gender issues. Gender diverse people’s existence is often hidden as gender binaries are strongly enforced and people who exist outside of this binary system are rejected or made invisible. Even within the queer scene, the stereotypical representations of masculinity and femininity are prevalent. Photo by Su Cassiano/Middle E

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Beyond Our Bodies

Quashani, Kensington, Australia, 2018 'Im a solo artist named Quashani Bahd, I was born in Harare, Zimbabwe. I came to Melbourne 17 years ago with a suitcase pack full of hope, dreams and inspirations and three pairs of shoes. My life is music, art, and fashion. Being a black woman just means that I need to work harder because I’m a woman but then I need to work twice as hard because I’m a black woman. Femininity for me means being hard and also soft. It would be like brick and laces. Growing up the perception of being a woman is that women are sensitive and therefore it makes them weak. But you can be sensitive and still be pretty tough. Often I get told ‘you’re so tough, you’re so strong’ and I didn’t realize what people meant is this endurance, this resilience. And only a woman would know what that is like, because men take it for granted. Don't get me started on male privilege or we'll need a whole volume!!!' Photo by Su Cassiano/Middle East Images/ABACAPRESS.COM

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A Brighter Summer Day

Darice at the arcade, Taipei, Taiwan, 2019. ‘I hope that anyone who reads my story or sees this project gets more confidence to be themselves. I’ve just turned thirty and I’m realizing more who I am now so I hope no matter your age, your gender or your orientation you can find yourself and be comfortable with it. Because even if you don’t know anyone like you, right now there is a lot of us out there.’ Darice Darice is Taiwanese American and identify as non binary, which means they don't identify as male or female. Growing up they were quite a tomboy and thought that one day they would grow to become a bearded old man, but that never happened. They learned how to perform femininity as a skill and trained for beauty pageants in America where their family moved. They learned how to wear make up, how to walk. We met at their favorite place, an arcade in Gonguan, the student area, where they go to play a dancing game when they can't sleep at night. Photo by Su Cassiano/Middle East Images/ABACAPRESS.COM

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Beyond Our Bodies

Margot, Paris, France, 2017 'It’s hard to identify to its own skin when you’re born in a so called female body. Because women are mainly represented from fake and unreal prospectives in movies, books, magazines… To win the right to be represented they first have to be judged as ‘feminine’ and ‘pretty’. The definitions behind these terms being really limited, these women are expected to have all the same body, the same attitude. The body has to be young, thin, without muscles, without hair, without scars and without stories… They are not persons anymore but some beauty allegory. Disembodied. The attitude has to be smooth, soft, light, ethereal, kindly, harmless. From persons they become empty shells, while their being of flesh and blood with a unique story is being suppressed. This femininity is the negation of the person. It’s unreal and unreachable, and toxic as it is dissociative. How could one identify with this, make the link between this representation of femininity and a real body? While there is nothin

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Beyond Our Bodies

Serwah plays in the heavy anti colonial band Dispossessed and is also a multidisciplinary artist. Stanmore, Australia, 2017 'I think femininity is different for everybody. I’ve been doing a lot of research about the Akan tribe that is my father’s tribe in Ghana. It’s so hard having roots in so many places and feeling like in a grey area. My mother is Italian-Dutch, and my father is Ghanaian. When two members of my African family that I never met came to Australia, it was basically ‘ Hey, that’s your sisters, make them feel at home'. They were calling me 'red', which is a derogatory term. I was like whoa?!?. Then I go to my white side of the family and they would be like ‘ Why don’t you change your appearance, straighten your hair, dress properly’ etc? I didn’t choose to be like this why can’t you accept me as I am anyway? It’s so hard to accept the differences between both sides cause they’re so different and contradicting at times.' Photo by Su Cassiano/Middle East Images/ABACAPRESS.COM