In a moment when trans people and our bodies are being violently politicized, it can be hard to imagine a world beyond our immediate survival. We are forced to fight for rights like medicine and restroom access, so intimately tied to our corporeality. SHED is a piece of my collective worldbuilding, designed to imagine futures into being and recenter the sacredness of the trans body. It is a meditation on transformation and remembrance, a prayer to flourishing as future ancestors.

The centerpiece incorporates snake shed and dried sphagnum moss from an Irish peat bog. Both are symbols of transformation. Both are medicine themselves. In the bog, sphagnum moss creates an environment so acidic and anaerobic that nothing else can live, and yet nothing fully dies. Bodies are mummified, sacrificial treasures are preserved, and instead of decomposing, the moss becomes peat that is burned for light and warmth. 

As trans people, we know this liminal space between life and death all too well. In conditions not fit for our survival (or designed against it), we insist on creating life – on flourishing. We shed our skin time and time again to adapt to this growth. This piece holds an amulet encased in glass and metal. The fractal forms growing out of it wrap the body like moss, preserving its form for future generations. Ultimately, this piece reflects my hope and belief that our community will flourish so far into the future that our existence is mythologized and our people rightly deified.

Featured in EMERGENCE: Future Ancestors and QUEERPHORIA vol. 5 for NYC Jewelry Week.