More about #MyBitsMyBusiness

This work is a community experience, evolving through collective input. It centres the relevance and irrelevance of the vulva to the queer community, and the desire to maintain ownership over how we name, clothe and relate to our genitalia- pushing against anti-trans efforts to exclude transgender women from women’s spaces. Demanding a performance of femininity, or ‘proof of sex’ to access certain spaces endangers everyone's privacy and dignity 'not only trans women'.

The work will feature a steel sculpture of a vulva surrounded by ‘panting’ (pant bunting) created in workshops (including ‘pants poetry’ workshops). The pants will be decorated with words/images expressing participant's thoughts regarding the transphobic obsession with ‘what’s in our pants’.

Hanging of the pants will partially obscure the sculpture, reflecting the precarious nature of community privacy.  Future goals of the project include a soundscape of participants' thoughts and expanding to include disability privacy issues which intersect with the concept.

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Who are the Big Pants Collective?

Rowan (they/them) has worked as a multimedia community craftivist for many years and is currently studying for an Ma in Fine Art at Teesside University. They formed The Big Pants Collective in response to this callout and were joined by with Tracey (any pronouns), a PR/social media expert who loves to draw, and Alys (she/her), an illustrator and fire sculptor, they form the Big Pants coordination team.

Along with other members of the collective, they share an experience of queerness in an increasingly queerphobic world. They actively seek to consider and represent intersectionality within  queer and trans struggles. This is aided by members coming from across the UK, from a variety of ethnicities and many of them having either physical/mental health issues and/or being neurodivergent.

This is the collective’s first project, they plan to continue to utilise their diversity of membership and skills, from embroidery and sculpture to folk punk, to extend their work into related topics