TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

Transcendental is an interactive sculpture enabling the re-visioning of the celestial heavens to immortalize queer and trans icons through the creation of a new exoplanet for present and future queer and trans existence. By the end of 2024, scientists have discovered 5811 exoplanets in 4340 planetary systems. Through the interactive involvement of visitors, Transcendental ensures one of these exoplanets includes a safe place for queer and trans communities.

Upon entering a dark circular curtain, a spotlight shines upon an interactive sculpture of a copper volcano, surrounded by an etched disk showing a celestial map of queer and trans constellations, placed on a podium. The visitor touches the knob embedded within the volcano, which, as it moves, lights up the LEDs of one of the constellations woven into the copper mesh sculpture of the five celestial bodies suspended in the room. On its ceiling is a projection of the Northern Hemisphere’s galaxy system.

By launching a particular hexadecimal code of the rainbow spectrum on the podium disk’s colour wheel, the visitor activates these celestial bodies’ constellations, visualized by stars embedded in the copper mesh, and hears quotations of queer activists. Each of the five sculptures is formed in the image of the body of each activist. The human rights quotations are chosen from transnational activists, immortalizing their thoughts in this astronomical universe as constellations and heavenly bodies.

Upon the fifth interaction, the volcano launches a final constellation by emitting ash into the heavens, and a quote describing the visitor´s contribution of this new exoplanet in this re-imagined astronomical universe. By engaging with Transcendental, the visitor tenderly generates a place for queer and trans history in our expanding cosmos for all genders and forms of life, where life is free, complex, queer, weird, and curious, with no judgement or danger.