feature: college students use multimedia project to explore intersections of race, sexuality, and gender performance

Our names are Erica West and Kyle Lopez, and we are both juniors at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. We are the co-creators of Collage, a multimedia creative project which investigates the influence of race, gender, sexuality and other markers of identity and difference on the personal styles and gender performances of queer people of color. Through interview, photography, film and audio we delved into the background of our subjects, with the hopes of crafting a narrative around what it looks like to occupy the liminal space of so many marginalized identities while also trying to survive and thrive in a world not built for you. While the concept for Collage has been in the works since Winter 2015, the final product was created as the final project for a Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies class at our university called Queers of Color Critique.

The idea of the personal as political served as a great inspiration for the project, since our bodies are constantly politicized any time we occupy public space. While fashion is often seen as a shallow and exclusionary pastime, we believe that expression through personal style can be used as a tool for empowerment and affirmation of our complex identities. Having our subjects speak about their style choices revealed so much about how they think about their presentation. From Falon’s sporty ‘soft butch’ aesthetic that also reflects her background as a dancer, to Pallavi’s edgy mix between masculine and feminine, accented by the Om symbol necklace she wears as a tribute to her Hindu faith and culture, style is about so much more than just throwing on clothes, for them.

*http://collagewm.wix.com/collage