Queerency [Lesbian Tokens]

Queerency [Lesbian Tokens] (2021) is a commentary on the commodification and tokenization the artist has felt as a lesbian–––– amongst the women she has dated who see it as something to flaunt in public, by men who find lesbianism as a “challenge” or power dynamic they can overrule or overcome,  and by the overall sexualization of sapphic existence by society and popular culture writ large.  This is the physical iteration of reclaiming the term ‘dyke’ in a world in which this descriptor is taboo. With this work, tokenization is not simply conceptual but rather made into something palpable and tangible. It is quite literally giving tokenization a quantifiable value in the form of currency––something to be traded or utilized by others to obtain a strategic advantage over another person or set of people. Each coin simultaneously exists on its own as a single object, yet only becomes fully activated in the presence of other lesbian tokens. Queerency [Lesbian Tokens], like the many forms of lesbian tokenization, is an enumeration and an amalgamation.