Seattle University
Sign Up

Molly Jae Vaughan: Transition as Performance, Life as Resistance

Wednesday, February 19, 2025 1pm to 6pm

+ 8 dates

  • Thursday, February 20, 2025 1pm to 6pm
  • Friday, February 21, 2025 1pm to 6pm
  • Saturday, February 22, 2025 1pm to 6pm
  • Wednesday, February 26, 2025 1pm to 6pm
  • Thursday, February 27, 2025 1pm to 6pm
  • Friday, February 28, 2025 1pm to 6pm
  • Saturday, March 1, 2025 1pm to 6pm
  • Wednesday, March 5, 2025 1pm to 6pm

901 12th Ave Seattle, WA 98122

View map

Curated by Arielle Simmons 

 

Molly Jae Vaughan fights for herself and her trans community to be seen as wholly human through art. Transition as Performance, Life as Resistance reflects Vaughan’s multi-disciplinary approach, with mediums including painting, performance, photography, textile, and screen printing. Each body of work thoughtfully, exquisitely crafted and yet secondary to the ultimate goal of communication. The uniting, principal question: what does it mean to be trans in America at this moment?

Vaughan shares her deeply personal experience of transitioning to gender alignment in figurative paintings that lay bare the most intimate moments of her own becoming. Vaughan is unflinching in her self-examination and revelation, in turn demanding the same from her audience.  

As trans Americans are under siege by an onslaught of anti-trans legislation, she also broadens our lens. In filmed performances of Atonement for Imaginary Sins, Vaughan absorbs the pain of this political vitriol literally, performing self-flagellation before the capitol building and across the American South with a flogger sewn in symbols of the American flag. Each strike across her back represents the staggering 1,320 anti-trans bills proposed in the United States since January 2023 to date. She takes the lashings in silence, but across the work boils the full-throated, full-bodied cry of fury. 

Other projects in the exhibition include Project 42: Flags, Safety in NumbersThe Brutality of Change: Photographic documentation of transexual technology, and Misinformation is a Virus.

Molly Jae Vaughan (b. 1977 London, UK) holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA from the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in solo exhibitions at Seattle Art Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, and Frye Art Museum, with group exhibitions at State of Fashion Biennale 2022, The Block Museum of Art and Henry Art Gallery. Vaughan’s work is included in the collections of Seattle Art Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Frye Art Museum, The Block Museum of Art, Henry Art Gallery, and Stanley Museum of Art. Vaughan represented Washington State at the National Museum of Women in the Arts for the survey exhibition New Worlds – Women to Watch in 2024.

Vaughan was the recipient of the Betty Bowen Award in 2017. She has received grants from Art Matters Foundation, 4 Culture, and the National Performance Network. Her work has been featured in The AdvocateSurface Design JournalNew American Paintings and Transgender Studies Quarterly 

She is currently a Professor of Art at Bellevue College in Bellevue, WA.

  • Ira Evetts
  • Rachel Segrest

2 people are interested in this event

User Activity

No recent activity