Queer Ancestors Project: Guiding Spirits of Care
Queer Ancestors Give Us Strength (2017), linocut, Cedar
This print was made in honor of five of my personal queer heroes: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Leslie Feinberg. The work of all five of these individuals has inspired and informed my own queerness and what it means to exist in this world. I hope to honor all of their works, ideologies, and teachings with this print. It is also meant as a reminder to our queer and trans siblings today that we have beautiful powerful ancestors to lend us their strength through their words, actions, and wisdom for all that we continue to exist and resist for.

Lenore Chinn (2016), linocut, Alan Gutierrez
Lenore Chinn is a Chinese American queer artist and activist who was born and raised in San Francisco. Lenore is widely known for her realist visual art —particularly her painting — which provided a snap shot into her friendship circles in the 1980s and 90s. While beginning to paint her friends she did not expect that many of them would die of AIDS related complications. Her work is in some ways an archive, memoriam, and celebration of a vibrant social circle that she still adores. Lenore is an activist and longtime member of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club — as a part of it she founded the Women’s Day Blood Drive. For nearly two decades, Lenore led a blood drive on Women’s Day to generate support for people living with HIV who were on AZT. Many women — trans, cis, bisexual, queer and of color — played critical roles in caring for people living with HIV/AIDS. They were doulas. They cared for a generation of people who were dying due to state violence and government neglect. Many of the women who were leaders in AIDS activist circles, who formed working groups in ACT UP chapters across the U.S., are not remembered for their tremendous work battling HIV/AIDS. Lenore is a living legend who cared for many of the spirits that still live in San Francisco — the 20,000 fabulously imperfect trans and queer people who died of AIDS here in San Francisco. I think of them as my ancestors. If you were one of those women who were there and caring for our dying families then I encourage you to tell your story. I also thank you for ensuring that our people went onto another dimension with dignity and love.

Reverend Bobbie Jean Baker (2013), linocut, Corey Brown
It saddens me that this is my second memorial print (and there could be many more I’m sure) for a trans* elder that has passed since this round of the QAP began. Minister Baker was killed in a car accident on New Years Eve 2014. I did not know Min. Baker very well, but the few occasions where I shared spaces with her were filled with joy, laughter, and love. Min. BobbieJean led the service for the first Transgender Day of Remembrance event I attended after moving to the Bay area in 2010. I was captivated by her beautiful voice and the presence she brought to the room. During Pride month the following summer, we had a brief yet playful conversation at the Trans* March afterparty that was hosted by TGI Justice Project. She had quite an impact on the lives of many queer youth and was a pinnacle in a variety of communities that will greatly miss her care, gentle guidance, and compassion.
She served in a number of different positions as a religious leader and as a community leader: as the TransSaints Western Regional Minister of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries; Lay Minister at Transcending Transgender Ministries at City of Refuge; lead singer of the all transgender member Transcendence Gospel Choir (a group she was part of for over a decade); and a substance abuse and transgender health counselor at San Francisco’s Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center. She was also long time advocate of TGI Justice Project and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples Movement/FICPM.

The Star Miss Major, linocut, Corey Brown
Since I was a young teen, my tarot deck has been an ancestor, offering gentle guidance, sharing wisdom, and connecting me with a past much larger than myself. I have chosen to embark upon a journey of creating my own tarot deck with cards relating to specific queer ancestors and personal experiences in my own life.

The Star – Guidance, serenity, and hope
In the words of Barbara Moore, a well-known modern author of tarot meanings, “Stars have played roles both mystic and mundane in the lives of humans. We like to wish upon a star. Looking at the stars gives us perspective. Stars are used for navigation. The constellations tell stories; we use them to find understanding, direction, and hope. Their gentle yet brilliant light gives comfort and hope in times of darkness. They are not illusionary like the moon nor overwhelming like the sun. They are soft, gentle, and yet amazingly powerful. This card brings refreshment and cleansing after troubles. It promises restored faith and renewed purpose.”
Miss Major has been an activist and mentor in the transgender community since the 1960s and was an active participant in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. She moved to California in 1978 and provided support during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. She went on to become the Executive Director of the Transgender Gendervariant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) which provides direct service and support for trans women, many of whom are of color and currently or formerly incarcerated, and works to fight against the Prison Industrial Complex.
I want to honor Miss Major’s legacy and pay tribute to all the guidance, serenity, and hope she has given and continues to give to me and so many other people. She’s still fucking here, just like the stars.

Untitled (2014), linocut, Onyinye Alheri
In my quest for a spiritual path which originates from my ancestral region yet does not require that I deny my queerness I found the Bori practice. Bori is a pre-colonial spirit possession cult which originated in what is now northern Nigeria and southern Niger. It is an indigenous African religious practice that not only consist largely of women, but accepts and encourages participation from trans* people, who are otherwise ostracized by the community, The majority of Bori practitioners are those who are marginalized – including sex workers, the disabled, lesbians, and other social and sexual ‘deviants’.
With this piece I drew inspiration from the saying/phrase “the magic is in the mundane.” Focusing on of the more mundane aspects of my day-to-day existence – my 9 to 5 office job – I wanted to demonstrate how spiritual experiences can be found in every moment of our lives. Two important factors in ritual are repetition (as seen in chanting, speaking of mantras, and dances) and anonymity/loss of self or ego (as seen in the wearing of make-up, masquerades, and cloaks. It is in using these methods that practitioners are able to “step out” of the physical plane and onto the metaphysical.

Vista a un mundo más allá del nuestro, cerca e invisible (2019), linocut, Satän
La naturaleza tiene una cantidad inimaginable de poderes curativos y muchas veces es demonizada especialmente por mentes conservativas y capitalistas. Los hongos por ejemplo tienen miles de propiedades que tienen la capacidad de sanar todo tipo de afecciones y enfermedades. María Sabina Magdalena García fue una curandera y chamán de la etnia indígena mazateca del estado de Oaxaca en México. Ella usaba los hongos como herramienta sanar nuestro espíritu.
La v. amazónica es súper mágica y fascinante. Los indígenas suelen extraen el jugo de las raíces, para usarlo como un tinte de color negro para el cabello.
Además su esencia tiene la capacidad de ayudar a despertar la vida espiritual, contribuyendo a la identificación de emociones negativas que impiden seguir adelante. Ayuda a enfocar la atención en otras dimensiones más allá del plano físico. Funciona como guía, así como una luz en el medio de la noche, que así como su flor, hace referencia al renacimiento.
Gracias a los caracoles tengo siempre presente que con paciencia todo se da y como un refrán que siempre escuche creciendo “lento pero seguro”.

for the young ones [Justin Chin], Kimiko Goeller, linocut
“Let the young ones be queer the way they want to be queer, as long as they are queer, as long as they find among themselves each other to love” –Justin Chin
I remember coming out to one of my friends when I was younger and her first response was “are you sure?” This happens to me now even within queer communities. I keep coming back to this quote because it is a reminder that someone before me was thinking about how weird and wonderful the world could be if we loved and admired each other’s queerness.
I want this print to be both a tribute to Justin and also a reminder that there is more than enough space for youth to define themselves. It makes me a bit sad that I couldn’t include more about Justin’s idiosyncrasies – the odd things that he carried about him (like his wild performance acts, etc). This print was based off a portrait of Justin Chin taken by Kevin Killian. If you want to learn more about Justin’s queerness, I highly recommend you do some research – he had these wild performance art pieces and seemed to always carry around random objects like wind up mechanical insects and light-up googly eyes.

Sun – Protector of Queer & Trans Prisoners (God of Elements and Life) (2018), Linocut, Queen Sen Sen
I created this print as a symbol of myself as Sun and my experience in Jail for 3 days after being arrested at a protest. I remembered yearning for sunlight to touch my body and felt disempowered while my body ached from bruises and wounds. In this piece, I wanted to re-imagine myself as a divine protector for all Queer and Trans prisoners. In prisons, jails, and other institutions, the treatment of Queer and Trans people should be addressed and dismantled. As a divine protector, I would give them the strength to heal from wounds and dehumanization. I would humanize them with my powers and heal multigenerational trauma.
Below I made a description of what would be said about myself as a divine protector:
“Sun originates from land, water, fire and air. Sun holds the power to transform fear and hopelessness into bravery and love. Sun grows using the energies of love and compassion to fuel their Magick wand. The Magick wand begins to ring in a pattern and gives source to heal the traumas that have traveled many generations and dimensions. Although, each traveling trauma challenges Sun’s power to control fear and hopelessness. Sun achieves great power when creating love and brave Magick to use against these challenges with their Magick wand.”

Brushgazum (2017), linocut, Tavi Taos
Mark Aguhar is one of the goddesses I pray to at night. She’s held me when no one else could. And i would go to her in times i no longer wanted to be here, when i wanted to end it, I would visit her blog and gag. Her content would make me laugh and cry and get wet in those fucky times. She introduced me to so many new ideas and affirmed me. “Bodies are inherently valid.” Yes god! Im tryna get one of her poems (Axes) inked on my body. Call Out Queen, her blog, had so many videos of her feeling herself, while applying makeup chair dancing, journaling and telling about her day, doing spells, more dancing, rubbing oil on her sexy body, licking the hand of an off -screen daddy feeding her donuts, modeling her own clothes and among these a vid of Mark brushing her hair and coming close to cumming… Uuuuyyyy!!!

Self-Portraid with G-d (2017), linocut, Yonit Mordechai Moerman
This print is about intimacy with G-d, through tradition, ritual, or the physical. Lately I have been very interested in ways that Judaism itself is queer, and I wanted to interrogate those feelings through my art. The left side of this print is a portrait of myself holding the corner of my tallit (prayer shawl) to my mouth, about to kiss the tzitzit. There is also a tradition of kissing mezuzot. Both practices stem from the commandment to be conscious of G-d in daily life.
Every Friday we sing L’chah Dodi, which is a welcome to Shabbat, who is characterized as a bride. At my LGBT synagogue in New York, we always turn towards the door at the end of the song as if the bride is actually entering the room. The figures on the right are the representation of the feeling of being embraced, maybe by a lover, maybe by the Shabbos bride, maybe by G-d herself.

It’s Not Time for You to Cross Sylvia Rivera, linocut, Tavi Taos
After her body had been found in the hudson river , Sylvia could still hear Marsha tellin’ her, “You gotta keep fighting girl cuz it’s not time for you to cross the River Jordan.” I can hear these same words, on the day to day. I tell myself, along with Marsha and Sylvia ,It’s Not Time for You to Cross.
Sylvia snatches her 10’s on the banks of swirling tendril like waters. Carrying, while she carries her life with her in bags, Silvia was also homeless for most of her physical life. And for me, this looks like being able to rest on the cement and carrying my stuff everywhere I go day to day.
She also carries 60 stitches. How she got them was the same day at the 4th annual gay march when she screamed “gay power,” rallying folks to advocate for trans and queers in jail. After being booed and beat up on stage, she locked herself in a room — “I had the wall covered in blood”– as Marsha broke down the door to help. Like me, Sylvia was suicidal AF. This wasn’t the first time she tried to end it. On another Carry, at her wits end, she jumped in the river in Yonkers. So she had a complicated relationship with The River.
Carefree, as tentacles try to pull Sylvia across the river. These tendrils partly represent the forces of suicide Sylvia battled with. Buuuuut, they are somewhat octopus limbs<333!!! a creature I identify with. For me suicide often looks and feels like demons, who can be misunderstood. Maybe octapussy just wants to play.
Marsha was murdered and then found in these same waters. “When she died, part of me went with her. Because one of our pacts was that we’d always cross the River Jordan together, and to me this is the River Jordan, the Hudson River.”
To see the full interview about Sylvia recalling her relationship with Marsha, go to:
https://vimeo.com/37548074
Wicker, Randy and Reina Gossett. “Sylvia Rivera Reflects on the Spirit of Marsha P. Johnson.” Vimeo, 16 Oct 2017. Vimeo.com/37548074
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_GZUwMniBA

Tibo-K (2019), linocut, Christine Abiba
this print is a reminder that every heartbeat is a prayer of gratitude to all my queer elders and young ancestors who help me grown in love.
when you’ve spent all these years crying your heart full, and the world patiently waited- watching you feel, watching u birth abundance. when you started taking an inventory of all the hours slowing down, and miraculously, you forgot how to count. when you remember your a part of the bounce, the convocation of space and time, of everything happening at once- the living tradition breaking itself new into a small composition of all the universe just tryna keep the groove—
and when god makes it obvious that they looking out for you, asks the people who you should be talking to- to take your heart out on a stroll. and while wandering, you notice poems on the sidewalk and whispers of a queer world in the making, accompanied by hums of our ancestral cadence. so when finally, these symphonies of soft commotions got us feelin like heaven’s irresistible, like it’s within reach, and we got every part of our beings chasing and loving and jiving and chasing at full force, leaving it all on the dance floor—-
this is what it feels like to pray.

hugging themselves, lift me up (2017), linocut, Mata
hugging themselves” comes from a time I felt like I bared my heart and had nothing to show for it. I was suffering to live in a mostly white colonial town. The feeling of isolation and alienation that resulted was unbearable. I became self-loathing and hid into myself. After a particularly bad night in which I walked in the snow from one side of town to the other with a dead phone, I felt broken. I had felt like the only two friends I had in that city no longer wanted me there and I confessed my feelings to a boy only to find out they liked my friend. Defeated, the following days I kept drawing a figure of someone with arms long enough to hug themselves. Always with their eyes closed. I realized that to be brown and queer the most important person I needed to be receiving love from, was myself. It became a ritual of self love, a symbol to draw that would remind me to be gentle with myself. For this reincarnation I adorned them in what artifacts my body holds when loving myself. They are radiating from the power of their own love.
The addition of the bottom print, “lift me up,” brings in the element of all the work my ancestors have done to lift me up. The more I have come to connect with my ancestors, the more I realize how their existence has shaped my reality. Their history is etched into their body.

HOLD EACH OTHER PRECIOUS (2019), linocut, Kimiko Goeller
This print came about as my answer to that question. I thought about friends and mentors who had given me space to be vulnerable and included a part of them in this print. As I was creating the design, the phrase “hold each other precious” — something we all say to each other in qap (queer ancestors project)– kept repeating in my head. I wanted this print to capture the magical moments where we feel treasured by those that we love.