This year I’ve been working with long term collaborator Nando Messias helping them to document their performance archive, accumulated over two decades of creating work, much of which I have documented.

Nando wearing various garments from their ‘Narnian closet’, a trans archive of exquisite costumes and ephemera.

They are currently in the process of activating their archive, bringing these costumes, which have been living as ghosts in their wardrobe back to life through performance and documentation before eventually laying them to rest at the Museum of Transology, where trans history is archived by trans-identifying archivists and volunteers to make sure that our history is told by us rather than by others.

‘Ghost Dress’ - This image was inspired by the idea of their costumes living as ghosts in the back of the closet, waiting to be re-activated.

Artsadmin initially hosted Nando for a two-week residency, which enabled conversations about archival practices and how an artist could bring change to traditional ways of treating ephemera. During this time Nando set up their archive on the Artsadmin stage which is actually above the Artsadmin achive,. so Nando’s archive was standing on top of that of Artsadmin!

‘TransMission: Sissy TV is a project investigating trans archives, it seeks to address the gap in representation of trans and non-binary voices in institutional archives. Nando uses their archive as a framework to discuss larger issues such as transphobia, the pathologisation of trans bodies and identities, trans exclusion, social violence, and visibility. They travel the country with their archive in tow, performing inside their closet which they set up on stage. The audience is invited to enter and sit with Messias, to touch their costumes, to smell their perfume, to try on their shoes and to queer exclusionary notions of who has the right to speak up.’

Pink is dominant in the archive featuring items such as multiple knickers from ‘The Pink Supper’ which were worn layered one over another and many a pink dress from various performances.

“Dressing up is part of the trans experience, it is a political act – going out dressed up takes courage, however it is also very much an element of trans joy.”

Nando’s haptic approach goes against the received knowledge of how to archive and display collections. In essence, they argue that the archive should not be sterilised. It lives in the lipstick stains, in the sweat stains, in the blood marks. The archive is in the tear of a fabric that has been badly mended, it is in the broken heel of a shoe.