Leni Wiegand with Lenscratch
We love seeing what our midwest nice artists are up to! We’re excited to share that Leni Wiegand was selected as a Top 25 Students to Watch with Lenscratch ✨ Leni was featured in our tl;dr exhibition.
I was recently honored to be featured among the 25 chosen for Lenscratch’s Top 25 students to watch for my series The Whole Preposterous Ideology, along with so many other amazing artists, including fellow trans-non-binary artist Ash Huse who was featured for their series DEADNAME.
In my series, I examine various elements of transphobia that trans and nonbinary people face when trying to go about their our lives. Sadly, this is just a bit too relevant right now as trans rights have become one of the hot-button issues of this election cycle. One part of this is the staggering 830+ anti-trans laws that have been proposed around the United States this year. Instead of just endlessly obsessing over the laws, I decided to turn them into something useful and incorporate them into my artistic practice while simultaneously pointing out the bigoted and often ridiculous elements that are contained within them. These snippets of laws are combined with photographic self-portraits of my own transitioning body with the databending process, defying the canon of what bodies should be shown. In databending, the binary code of the files themselves is modified using non-traditional editing programs; this proverbial and literal breaking of the binary results in visual glitches. The glitches that result from the forced modifications the file goes through when databending matches the struggles and scars left behind by those forced to go through the incorrect puberty. In a way, it leaves us glitched from the trauma we faced growing up in a body that felt unnatural to us. These glitches show the difficulties trans and non-binary people face as we are forced to navigate a society that not only expects but strictly enforces the gender binary.
I plan to continue to explore this series while finishing up my MFA at Indiana University by exploring the possibilities of video as well as incorporating more of my personal battles with transphobia. — Leni Wiegand