Morgan Black: Welcome! | BRAW Bursary
Being able to create the work ‘Welcome!’ for the BRAW bursary was a great opportunity to complete a project I initially began in 2020 to draw attention to transgender rights in Russia, the purpose of which was to create a ‘samizdat’, or piece of dissident literature, to highlight Putin’s repressive ‘gay propaganda’ law of 2013. For the BRAW presentation I decided to expand the project from one country’s laws to three, adding Columbia and Iran as nations whose existing LGBTQIA+ legislation either criminalises minority persons, or is not actively enforced or policed in actuality. The original Russian ‘samizdat’ was conceived as a 4-page A5 flyer, with a front cover proclaiming ‘Welcome!’, a back cover bearing a graphical ‘propaganda’ art piece advancing transgender rights, and a 2-page comic strip interior in which a trans character simply and clearly informed the reader of their situation. I kept the exact same format for the other two flyers, for Iran and Columbia, though each one was drawn in a slightly different drawing style.
The original public presentation purpose of the 2020 concept was realised by my being able to present a stack of printed copies of each flyer to ‘take away’, and I was happy to leave the remaining flyers with ShaperCaper, to be distributed at further future events. The one-off poster ‘Welcome?’, which introduces the concept of the whole project (by asking us to consider the ethical and political dimensions of foreign nations we may choose to visit), was displayed publicly at the BRAW event and gained good, positive feedback. I was also able to take the opportunity to show and discuss some of my earlier associated ideas and sketch works which were never fully developed, such as the ‘Empire vs Rebels’ piece inspired by the October 2020 murder of Russian transwoman Viktoria Basakovskaya, and another Russian Soviet-era propaganda-style poster against hate speech, which I was able to present in rough printed form to the audience.
Overall, I felt the work as a whole – both the actual talk and presentation, and the printed materials which were on view – were very well-received, and I was glad at being given the opportunity (post-COVID) to not only complete a 2-year old concept that was always intended for public view and consumption, but to be able to expand and evolve it into a wider, broader work encompassing international human rights, and influenced directly by the testimonies and personal stories of real trans people in the nations under inquiry. While not directly related to Dundee itself or local matters, my point – as made during the presentation, and echoing the words of one of Shepard Fairey’s ‘propaganda’ poster works, is that “injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere”. Furthermore, my personal and long-standing links to Sparkle, the national transgender charity, and my trans (and allied) contacts around the world, have served to remind me that we are part of an international community, and as such, we need to be aware of the injustices and crimes which threaten people like ourselves in other territories so that by working together, we can one day hope to make the world a better place for all, not just a few.
Morgan Black is a multidisciplinary artist, currently pursuing a PhD in gender and aesthetics at DJCAD, with specific focus on the non-binary and transgender body, self, and viewpoint. Their practice encompasses video, performance, drawing and comix, and the removal of cultural and artistic distinctions and boundaries such as ‘highbrow/lowbrow’
Welcome! is a series of three mini comic books, in which trans persons from three different nations describe their experiences of transgender life under their respective political regimes, illustrating the legal, cultural and social barriers which obstruct trans rights in Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.