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The last four years I have been writing in my journal.
It started with me writing in detail about everything I saw, smelled and experienced during a day. Thus, me and the encounters I had with the world arround me.
Today, my writing is reflective, hence about the world around me but specifically about my own internal thoughts to external experiences (even though one can not separate internal and external as such). I tried to understand how different cultures, people, countries, (traumatic) events, relationships, and emotions received and felt have influenced the ideals and premise I live by every day.
I closely listen to what I tell myself on a daily basis in order to reflect, correct and grow.
My journal tracks my internal development in relation to external events.
It allows me to look back and see the path that I took so far.
It gives me space to formulate clear who I  am in the present.
It prepares me for the future, by keeping me in the present.

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Bottom Left: A lipstick, Top Left: A plaid shirt, Top Right: A box of earrings, Bottom Right: My cat

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Growing up in a middle-class South Asian household, there are certain impositions on how you perform your gender through the ages. During our school years, the school system, parents, teachers, every adult around you tells you that there are two types of girls- good and bad. The good girls were studious, with neatly tied hair, with proper skirt lengths etc. And the bad girls were those who cared too much about their looks, wore make up, painted their nails etc. This was all imposed on you all through your school years. But once you step into the real world you are expected perform your femininity differently, take up grooming practices that until aged 17-18 were frowned upon. But how are you supposed to inhabit appropriate femininity overnight? Why do the rules change? Who makes these rules?

The image on the bottom left is of the first every lip shade I purchased in 2018 when I was 23. Even after years of unlearning in the years after school, I struggled to break the mental binary of good and bad femininity (for myself) I was taught in my adolescence and had since imposed on myself. The first time I wore this light peach shade of lipstick I feared everyone had eyes on me, I was being scrutinised.

The image on the top left is an image of one of the many plaid shirts I own. I am a collector of plaid shirts; they help me perform my gender with fluidity and ease. They are like a second skin that I slip into. After struggling with performance of femininity, they help me break they the imposed binarism of masc/femme.

The image on the top right corner is a box of earrings that I have managed to travel with across continents and time zones. They bring me a lot of joy because some of them are gifts from friends, ex partners and family. Each earring is like a time capsule that transports me to a different time in my life.

The last image, on the bottom right is of my cat. One could wonder, what has a cat got to do with gender? But I’d argue-it has everything and nothing to do with gender. The relationship between human and non-human animals is one of co-existence. When my cat hears my name or hears me call him, he has no conception of the gender or the sexuality attached to that human body. He loves me for the care and love that I show him. I can show up as I am on a given day and he will accept me in any gender or genderless and that is how I wish the world saw me each day.

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An egg with legs, on an old coat hanger in a Airbnb in Galway. 

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I was a bit of a weird kid in many ways. I was a tomboy, I spent all of my free time reading, but most of all, I adored teddies. I remember one time I counted them all, and it came to just over 100.

One Christmas, a family member remarked that I was too old for such things (I was eight) as she gifted me two dolls (something everyone knew I had no interest in). She wanted to gender me as a girl, so much so, that the (stereotypically) gender neutral toy of the Teddy, became too childish and not girly enough.

In 2020, I stumbled upon this egg and instantly knew I had to have it. In many ways, I relate to the egg. It is absurd. It is not gendered. It too has courdoroy trousers. But it is also a rejection of norms, gender, age, maturity. The egg is a queer egg.

I am 22. I am definitely 'too old' to own this egg. I am still a little weird, though now I have the word queer to account for some of this. The act of bringing up the egg is supposed to be shameful, but its not. That's why the egg is my cultural artefact.

(P.s I found out, after buying the egg, that egg is a term used to describe someone who hasn't realised they're trans yet (or been cracked by their realisation!)

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My cultural artifact is my Michigan basketball pinney, which I bought in 2011 during my junior year of undergrad at the University of Michigan.  This coincided with the rise and subsequent naming of the ubiquitous cultural image of the 'Cool Girl' in the United States, which as a young straight-identified woman at the time, I tried desperately to emulate by regularly wearing this pinney.  The Cool Girl was later immortalized in an iconic monologue from the book/movie Gone Girl, in which the protagonist says:

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot...  Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl."

I chose this as my cultural artifact, because   of the (alarmingly) huge influence that Cool Girl culture and imagery had on my performance of gender and sexuality in my late teens and early twenties, and the lingering effects it still has on me over a decade later.  Today, I only wear this pinney to sleep in, but it's a reminder to me of the ways in which we are shaped and influenced by cultural and societal messaging - and allows me to appreciate the freedom I've found as I've gotten older in embracing moments of being the uncool girl instead.

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This is the Warren Cup and, while it's not mine to own, represents an important cultural context to my view of gender and sexuality expressions. The cup is in the British Museum and I have seen it there many times. It shows sexual acts between two men and it was forbidden to be on public view for most of the 20th Century, because at the time homosexuality was illegal in the U.K. In my opinion, it is vital that humans are free to express their sexuality and gender to live a happy life. While there is a long way to go before the sexes are equal and gender it abolished (!), at least being gay is no longer illegal in Ireland. Although it's impossible to forget that it still is for 70 countries worldwide, across four continents.

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I found this male butterfly on a trip to my home country and felt it captured my understanding of my own gender, my culture, and my journeys as a migrant. I believe that embracing vulnerability (particularly for men) enables us to connect with people at a deeper level. I believe that sharing our vulnerability is a way to spread kindness, empathy and compassion. My male butterfly represents a journey of transformation and a symbol of empowerment as a feminist, gay scholar from Latin America.