Family relationships. Gender dysphoria. Society’s gender norms. These issues that the transgender community deal with are seldom addressed in typically conservative Singapore, but one local photographer is seeking to nurture the conversation and build greater awareness. Grace Baey, a recipient of the inaugural Objectifs Documentary Award, will present her collaboration with four transgender individuals at an upcoming exhibition in the non-profit arts space.

Titled (Un)bound, the project provides a glimpse into their struggles living in Singapore, with photographic prints by Baey and the personal scrapbooks of Sonia Pravinaa, Jose Jude, Deveshwar Sham, and Cassandra Thng. No stranger to capturing the spirit of transgender individuals through her lens, Baey was initially introduced to the community in 2015, when she photographed an annual transgender beauty pageant.

Offering a deeper delve into the topic of transgender identity, she talks us through her journey in creating the exhibition.

Sonia Pravinaa. Photo: Grace Baey More

On what drew her to tell the stories of Singapore’s transgender community.

My first touchpoint with the trans community was when I started volunteering as a photographer for the annual transgender beauty pageants that a friend was organising. Prior to that, I was pretty ignorant about these issues, and it bothered me that I was so stuck in a bubble. So I took the time to get involved with various community initiatives over the years, to just learn and engage. I also realised that my experience was not reflective of the kinds of stereotypes that others tend to assume about trans individuals, and that was when I started working with friends to explore the different ways in which we could help build understanding and awareness about trans issues and gender identity.

I chose to work with Sonia, Jose, Cassandra, and Sham because their stories are so diverse and important to tell — i.e., Sonia’s experience as a mother raising not just her own child, but also mentoring other trans women; Jose as a devoted child to his parents who are still struggling to fully accept his gender identity; Cassandra sharing her perspectives growing up as a young trans person in Singapore; and Sham’s journey dealing with post-operative gender dysphoria, whilst finding support and comfort in his loving wife.

Cassandra Thng. Photo: Grace Baey More

On her concept for (Un)bound.

The aspect of collaborative storytelling has always been a significant part of the project. Sonia, Jose, Cassandra and Sham are all advocates and individual creatives in their own right, and incredibly articulate. I thought that would be foolhardy not to incorporate their unique voices in the work, and that was how the scrapbooking idea came about.

For the scrapbooks, I left each person to design and compile their stories however they wished, using pictures we’ve made together, as well as those from their personal archive. For the photographs, we’d spend time talking about different aspects of their stories that would be meaningful to flesh out before making these pictures proper.

Scrapbooking offered a useful medium through which to incorporate personal art, journal entires, and the element of play. I also felt there was something intimate about having viewers handle and flip through the physical scrapbooks, much like a personal journal, especially when dealing with the often sensitive topic of family and gender identity.

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