Two Hundred and Sixty-Two Thousand People
2023Two Hundred and Sixty-Two Thousand is the number of people in the UK whose gender identity is not the same as the gender they were assigned at birth. (ONS, 2021)
When I saw this statistic I realised I could not remotely picture this number in my head. And I started thinking, this group of people are so often represented as just a vague, somewhat meaningless number. So this idea really came from a desire to represent every person who is part of this figure, every trans man and woman, every nonbinary person and everyone who has any gender-queer identity.
I settled on using my typewriter to execute this as it allowed me to keep this idea realistic with what I had to work with, and in a way this also kept it grounded and informative. But it also meant I was able to manually create this piece, rather than let a computer take all the soul out of it, so each mark is the result of my hand striking the key, which means each mark is - however subtly - different.
I have had people who are represented by a mark respond to ths expressing surprise that there are so many people like them, and I hope more people could feel reassured and know they are not alone. I have also had responses from cisgender people who were also struck by the emotion and scale of the piece, and I think even if they do not personally relate to the piece, it could still influence how they think about the trans+ population, hopefully for the better.
My hope is this picece can be seen as a way of making a group of people who are oft-misrepresented to simply be seen, without any arguments or debates.
