Dark Side Of Transphobia

This piece was created as a response to transphobia and the way identity is often challenged, dissected, and denied by others. At the centre is a figure caught in tension, not because of who they are but because of how they are seen. The words “not a man” and “not a woman” are not self-defined, they represent labels forced onto people when society refuses to accept identity outside of its expectations, language that reduces, erases, and attempts to confine something complex into something narrow and incomplete. The body itself is fragmented, stitched, pulled, and divided, reflecting the experience of being made to feel as though identity is something that can be corrected, altered, or undone by external forces. The hands surrounding the figure do not belong to one person but to many, they represent society, strangers, systems, and opinions, each one reaching in with a sense of entitlement, pulling, tearing, and attempting to reshape something that was never theirs to control. There is no stillness in the figure, only tension, a sense of being held in place while being pulled apart at the same time, reflecting the exhaustion of existing under constant scrutiny where identity is not simply lived but continuously questioned and challenged. This piece is not about confusion but about conflict, not internal conflict but the conflict imposed from the outside, the struggle that comes not from being who you are but from being forced to exist in a world that resists understanding it. At its core, this artwork is about autonomy, about the right to exist without explanation, without interference, and without being pulled apart by others trying to decide what you should be, and the strength it takes to remain whole in a world that keeps trying to divide you.