Standards of Care, Maddie Alexander
Standards of Care is a series of prints that are both on cotton fabric, and paper. The prints on cotton fabric are a deep pink colour, and the fabric has frayed edges. The prints on paper are a deep cyanotype blue colour. The works have layered images of medical documents and historical text around gender affirming care for trans folks. They are hung against a wall. The video work is a layered video piece, with one video a bit smaller on top of a larger video, with some transparency between. The larger video is black and white, and shows the artist administering their testosterone shot while sitting on a bench. The smaller video is shot on a camcorder, and is in colour. It has the artist sitting in the same location, also administering their testosterone shot.
Title: Standards of Care
Artist: Maddie Alexander
Date: 2023-2024
Medium/Materials: Cyanotype and solarfast prints on fabric and paper, Paperclay sculpture, 16mm Film and Camcorder Footage
Dimensions: 50.8 x 60.96; 27.94 x 43.98 cm; 00:05:11
Form/Genre: Installation, video, print, photography, sculpture
Key Terms/Subject/Tags: Gender-affirming care; Bodily autonomy; Resilience
Artist Statement:
Maddie Alexander is a trans artist, archivist, and arts worker. Their artistic practice explores lived queer and trans experiences through an autoethnographic approach, blending archival materials and personal records. Their research based projects centre themes of desire, failure, care and dissonance and are often responsive to site and rooted in community collaboration. While Alexander’s work reflects contemporary concerns, it frequently draws on the visual and cultural histories of 1980s and ‘90s queer activist aesthetics, primarily the DIY print and installation practices of that era. Blending analogue and digital processes is a reflection on the fluid and layered nature of their personal experience of transness: fluctuating and creating through a patchwork approach to construct something that feels real and whole.
Alexander’s current research explores the historic and ongoing barriers trans folks face in accessing gender affirming care. Using medical ephemera and documentation, this work is deeply informed by their own experiences accessing care as a trans person. Recent projects incorporate sun printing (cyanotype and other sun sensitive processes) and video documentation. They feel a deep kinship between the chemical, time-based nature of sunprinting and the process of HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy)— both requiring patience, faith, and a sense of magic. Through this, Alexander sees their work as an act of reclamation: of narrative, of agency, and of time itself.
Cultural Context / Story Behind the Work:
This work was made during a period of time of Alexander’s lengthy journey accessing gender affirming care as a trans person, and is a response to the barriers and challenges they faced within the healthcare system.
Standards of Care is an ongoing series exploring the barriers of accessing gender affirming care for trans folks. The series uses historical trans healthcare documents, combined with the artist's personal healthcare documents; to consider what has or has not shifted in terms of access, language, and care. This series is a combination of Jacquard sun prints and cyanotype images.
The video work is a layered video documenting the artist injecting their Testosterone shot in the same location, 1 year apart. In this they are both building an archive of time passing, and exploring the unique choreography and movement that comes with this ritualistic action.
*content note, this video includes depiction of intramuscular injection + needles.
Rights for this Image:
This digital image is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. You are free to share it for non-commercial purposes, as long as you credit the artist.
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