Clarity Haynes

Being female and queer affects my life, how safe I feel in public space, how people treat me, how I feel in my body, how I feel about other people’s bodies, how I define masculinity and femininity for myself… This all affects my work. My queer community has always been full of trans and non-binary people and we have always had to fight for our rights, initiate our healing, redefine concepts of family and create, record and archive our culture.

Actually, I have taken long breaks from the project throughout the years to focus on other things; it hasn’t been a constant focus for me. But one way or another, the project always seemed to find me again. Maybe because it is so solidly about something real and positive. It is cathartic – for me, for people who model for me, and for the viewer.

It’s important to note that the participants have never been just women-identified people. And it became a collective effort right from the very beginning. It’s always been collective and personal at the same time.

Because people (again, not just women) were often commissioning their portraits and would take the portrait with them afterward, I took pictures of them with their portraits so that I would have a record of what the portrait looked like. I asked them to write because I was curious about their experience with their bodies. I was so uncomfortable in my body that I needed the stories of others to help me feel less alone. People who contributed writing got to read the words of others. When they sat down to write, they knew exactly what community they were addressing. But creating this written record also meant that the project was recorded, not ephemeral. As a lesbian, I’m aware that my contributions to culture are likely to be erased as I am doubly marginalized as a woman and a queer person. So I feel a responsibility to document and archive my work and history.

I have been thinking a lot lately about Janie Martinez, who passed away last year from ovarian cancer. Janie was in her forties, an artist, actress and body positivity activist. She wrote in the book several times through the long three-year process of her portrait’s creation. What she wrote was off-the-cuff, a poem of sorts. It’s haunting to read it now:

Ephemeral body, fleeting moments
Captured ghosts of our psyche
I was here.
I was alive.
I took up space.
I was somebody.

I’m really happy that people can find empowerment and break free of isolation through social media body positivity movements. It’s all to the good!

I deal with censorship by not addressing it in isolation. Every time someone I know is censored on social media, I speak up. I report it as a mistake to the platform and ask others to do the same. If enough people complain, they tend to correct their mistake. I also wrote an article in the art blog Hyperallergic about my experience as an artist who is constantly censored. Speaking up is key. That’s all we can do, is to not participate in self-censorship.

I think of the body as an altar. In many major religions, the body – especially the female body – is seen as unclean and not spiritual. But in the pagan tradition I am a part of, which honors the divine feminine, the body is sacred, the Earth is sacred, sexuality is sacred. People’s creative choices to adorn, tattoo, alter, or simply accept their bodies can be very powerful. Many of the necklaces worn by the models in my paintings also appear in the altars. Jewelry is highly symbolic and expressive for people. For this reason, it has always played a huge role in portraiture.
The show at Denny Dimin is presented by Benjamin Tischer of New Discretions, a nomadic curatorial project. Benjamin is a visionary curator who has championed my work and introduced it to the marketplace at times when it has been risky to do so. I feel very fortunate to be working with him.

I want my work to bring joy and warmth to the world. I want it to promote peace. I want it to empower the marginalized. I want it to celebrate those who choose to create their own spirituality, culture and power structures outside of the patriarchy. I want my work to be an antidote to the toxic masculinity that surrounds us in our world today.

I’m currently working with Benjamin Tischer on creating a chapbook for the Altar-ed Bodies show, which will contain images of my work along with writings by a variety of poets, artists and thinkers. I’m very excited about this as it is more interesting than the traditional catalogue with art essays. The poets in the chapbook all talk about issues that have to do with my work, but in very different, surprising and rich ways. The volume will be dedicated to the pioneering body-centric artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who posed for one of the large-scale portraits in the show, and whose writing is featured in the chapbook.