An event for trans resilience by the artist Cassils

Cassils’s Movement III (Etched in Light, National Mall, Washington DC), 2024, is a recording of an event, both celebratory and memorial, that occurred on March 31, 2024—the International Transgender Day of Visibility—and took place in the United States capital. Made in collaboration with the National Center for Transgender Equality, Etched in Light is a work that captures the “beauty and power and strength” of queer community, according to the artist. But the piece is also an act of protest that “contests and refuses the voyeuristic, scrutinizing, [and] surveilling gaze” forced upon trans people. A cyanotype, sixty feet long, was created with the bodies of those who gathered for Etched in Light. This luminescent record of camaraderie and presence acts as a kind of banner for trans resilience. But it is also a war ensign, signaling to the metastasizing right-wing forces in the US that queers are ready to fight.

Etched in Light was made with support by the Canada Council for the Arts.

—Alex Jovanovich