My work looks to articulate transsexual modes of embodiment, untethering threads of corporeal being and finding ways to communicate a bodily manifestation not so easily understood. My mediums are in constant transition, ranging from painting, metalwork sculpture, video, performance, or installation with just as frequently oscillating visual aesthetics. I swing from a romanticized elegance to aggressive or violent jabs, dancing between binaries until they melt entirely under the pressure. My goal within my practice is to create an acutely transsexual lexicon, to sing towards my fellow queers a call of collectivity and resistance.

My current mediumistic exploration is the usage of testosterone and estrogen cypionate, synthesized oils for hormone replacement therapy. My use of these hormones add a physicality and tangibility to the mediums they’re integrated with. Within the series “Portrait of the Artist,” I create abstract steel sculptures that function as self-portraits and material translations of my bodily experience. Wrestling with the material, piercing it and threading it with its brethren, allowing it to collaborate with me through the act of creation, are all materially specific actions which act as parallels to the process of transition. Bent, pierced, riveted together, with a flow of hormonal oil, the sculptures communicate an act of reconstruction and reclamation. 

Transition, transformation, transience, a never ending formation of the self; in flux not dissimilar to the waves of the ocean, the moon in the nightsky, the flowing of leaves in the wind. My work is inspired by these qualities and visual affects. It seeks to enliven trans* personhood and insists on an existence that does not seek for definitive conclusions, but instead finds thrills in the winding road of constant questioning.

Bio

JEBEDIAH DUNN is a transsexual, transdisciplinary artist from Southern California working throughout painting, metal sculpture, performance, and video. His work draws from political, social, and embodied experience stemming from an acutely trans* perspective of poetic rage. Using queer fury as a guiding force within his practice, he uses material exploration as a means towards critical inquiry and introspection. He pronounces trans* bodies within his work through experimental use of testosterone and estrogen cypionate as direct mediums. By pouring the hormonal oil on abstract steel forms or projecting through film, he asks questions about what makes a gendered body and, when distilled into its most essential oils, must we differentiate them?

Beyond his own practice, he is also dedicated to the art of education and currently works as a museum art educator and on-campus engagement coordinator at the UCI Orange County Museum of Art. He is currently en route to graduating with a Bachelor’s in Art from the University of California, Irvine.