Everything I draw is a collage of what’s healed me

Image: Black femme with facial hair, red lipstick, and blue eye shadow

Everything I draw is a collage of what’s healed me

Our 2022 TDOR artist cozcon created three visionary works of art celebrating trans love and families. cozcon is a multidisciplinary artist dedicated to broadening the visual lexicons of black, femme and queer life through work that claims the riches locked up in the exclusionary hubs of contemporary art, design and fashion to reinvest them into imagery that reflects the lived experiences of the marginalized and historically excluded.

Read on to learn what this year’s TDOR art means to them, and find more of their artwork on Instagram @cozcon.

For Trans Day of Resilience, I created art that captured a feeling I had when I was little — when children’s books made me feel like anything was possible.

Drawing and worldmaking were always part of my life. I started scribbling as soon as I could hold a crayon, and I made my first comic in third grade. Growing up adopted with white, conservative parents, I didn’t see myself reflected anywhere. When you don’t feel affirmed at home — the space where you lay your head, where you live and breathe — it can mess with your roots. That’s especially true for your experience of gender. You don’t have the language. You don’t know how to pinpoint it. Everything I draw is a collage of what’s healed me.

Illustration of 4 hands with different brown skin tones, nails and adornments, encircling a flower bouquet and the words “Trans Love Makes Our Gardens Grow”
Artwork by cozcon.

Growing up adopted with white, conservative parents, I didn’t see myself reflected anywhere. When you don’t feel affirmed at home — the space where you lay your head, where you live and breathe — it can mess with your roots.

Once I left home and went out into the world, I was able to find my family. With them, I felt free to explore. I could wear whatever I wanted! I was wearing bicycle wheels without the rubber on it as little head pieces going to get bubble tea — I was living! I felt free, I felt safe, and that’s the power of community: you can be stronger, you can be louder, and you can lean into yourself so much more. I feel most loved when I’m with them.

a Black femme with facial hair, dark red lipstick, and glitter on their face, eyes closed.

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That’s the power of community: you can be stronger, you can be louder, and you can lean into yourself so much more.

Illustration that says “Trans Love Heals Generations.” An intergenerational, embracing Black trans family emerges from a starry galaxy.
Artwork by cozcon.
It’s been over a decade, and my queer fam and I are still intact. We all trust each other. We continue to hold one another up. If one of us gets crossed, you’re crossing all of us. Even when we’re not together, that connection is still there. We can feel it. And it’s just like the healing nature of generations. You feel the presence of ancestors. What I’m gaining now is a fertility that I can bring into the future.

I wish I could re-experience the first time someone told me about the stars: we see them so far beyond whatever state they’re in now, their light reaching us long after they’ve died. Flowers and plants grow, die, and come back. The stars, flowers, and plants in my artwork represent different expressions of infinity. They’re almost like a blueprint of how we understand generations. All these lives have come before me, and every single one of those lives had unique but connected experiences. I’m here because my ancestors survived. When you connect with your past, you feel a responsibility — a kinship with the future. You feel that all at once. It’s all just one thing.

I want this artwork to help trans and nonbinary people know love is real, love is here, and it’s the seed to everything.

We don’t have room for any sense of separation. I think the heart of liberation is pure solidarity. All of us looking out for each other. You can have representation, people saying a string of words, but being seen is not being loved. I want this artwork to help trans and nonbinary people know love is real, love is here, and it’s the seed to everything. It’s the rain and the soil to our gardens.

Gender is like the teacher you need to demolish. It’s the lesson, the school, the language you have to obliterate. Gender’s there to fuck up. My experience of non-gender is freedom. It’s another way for me to access all my roots. When you pull all that energy, all those experiences together, the constructs of gender get obliterated. Those constructs can’t exist when you spread it across the millions of breaths that build who you are.
Illustration that says “Trans Love Is Divine & Liberating.” A large Black bejeweled trans femme deity looks down on a tiny Black trans child curled up in a flower.
Artwork by cozcon.

My experience of non-gender is freedom. It’s another way for me to access all my roots.

With this Trans Day of Resilience artwork, I want all trans youth to know: you’re the answer. I want nonbinary parents to know we see you. I want our trans elders to know thank you isn’t enough — if the greatest version of thankfulness is to survive and choose yourself, then to say thank you for real is to say I’ll keep fighting. And to the ancestors: I feel you with me.