Childhood, Inheritance, and the Bodies We’re Told to Ignore

Cosmo, a second-year sculpture student who only began working with clay two years ago, gravitates toward childhood symbols – chiefly dinosaurs. “They were my earliest love,” Cosmo reflects. “My mind wanders back to cartoons: vivid, round forms, oversized expressions.” This nostalgia sets the stage for the unexpected. Their dinosaurs don’t have conventional heads; instead, they bear soft, visceral “vaginal heads” that provoke confusion, curiosity, and often denial.

“People ask if I’m giving it a head,” Cosmo laughs. “The head is already there. They just refuse to see what they don’t want to.” They note that this refusal isn’t unique – Georgia O’Keeffe faced the same disbelief when viewers insisted her floral abstractions had nothing to do with anatomy. Cosmo’s response is both simple and disarming: “It’s a vagina.”

This bluntness is not for shock value but for reclamation. Their sculptures embody the changes experienced by transgender bodies – anatomy that defies both medical diagrams and cultural narratives. “Medical illustrations are overly idealized,” Cosmo says. “No one is symmetrical or static. My anatomy is correct.” Their work challenges viewers to confront the body as it truly exists: personal, particular, fluid.

Faith, Grief, and the Holiness of Ambiguity

For Azul, whose paintings and light installations glow with surreal, saturated color, questions of identity were once spiritual crises. “If queer people have always existed,” they wondered as a child, “why aren’t their stories in the Bible?” Growing up in church, baptized eleven times in an attempt to wash away unnameable shame, Azul spent years believing they had to exist in a fixed, sanctioned way to be worthy.

Yet their art reveals a profound liberation. Their canvases often stage Catholic iconography—halos, immaculate hearts, veils, candles—alongside nudity, queer lovers, and defiant displays of embodiment. Some call it blasphemy; Azul calls it truth.

“The spirit is nonbinary,” they say. “The body is a vessel of holiness, alive with emotion. Gender won’t matter when we’re dead.” Their work becomes a map of grief and rebirth, a place where their old self dies and their new self speaks. It is also, quietly and tenderly, a love letter – to their partner Kelso, and to the many versions of themselves that struggled to belong.