Reclaiming the Border Narratives - Trans Cultural Narratives in the Borderlands

Cuidad Juárez, MX

Tijuana, MX

Transgender communities in Cuidad de Juárez, Chihuahua, and Tijuana, MX, are striving to maintain autonomy, dignity, and self-determination in a socio-political climate that co-opts their collective movement and refuses their livelihoods in the same breath. These photo works of transgender (trans) communities in the borderlands of Tijuana, MX and Ciudad Juárez, MX, highlight cultural modalities of education and community building.

This work is a lifelong commitment to shift discourses surrounding trans identities in the Borderlands. Trans communities continue to nurture one another in the face of scarcity and in an alarming anti-trans political landscape. Using trans liberation aesthetics, the work centers self-determination, imagination, and radical vulnerability. The sitters and social players in the collection of photographs are of communities who were at the time, residing in the Jardin De Mariposas (El Jardin), a holistic social services organization for migrants and LGBTQ+ communities in Tijuana. A Majority of these women are migrants from other cities in the country of México, with a few of them being from different parts of Central America.

750 miles east, in Cuidad de Juárez, Chihuahua, there is a complex movement of trans cultural production occurring where transgender people are reimagining what the future can hold for trans people. Communities are creating advances for their people in the realms of performance, social advocacy, and cultural connectivity; both in person and via social media. The images of Juárez are a collection of environmental works documented in the Spring of 2022 and 2023.