Vivek Shraya: Legends of the Trans

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Vivek Shraya, "Legends of the Trans," 2021

Courtesy of the artist.

This new photographic work, inspired by the 1994 film Legends of the Fall, continues Vivek Shraya’s queering of performance, photography, and storytelling to reflect an open-ended and ever-evolving notion of herself and the immense value of non-conforming role models.

For Shraya, whose combined practices blur the arbitrary and limiting boundaries between music, literature, visual art, theatre, and film, making is a way to disrupt these hierarchies and break the rules.

Tristan Ludlow, the central character in the original film and the inspiration for Shraya’s photographs, is an unpredictable and unreliable rule breaker. For a young Shraya, just 13 when the film came out, Tristan’s flaws, his free-spirit, emotional depth, enviable long hair, and incessant lovability made a deep and lasting impression. While at first glance the filmic Tristan can be dismissed as a cis-gendered tragic hero whose toxic masculinity does only damage, Shraya’s reading shifts this character into a nuanced fluid light. The re-imagining of him through her brown trans body celebrates the gender and socially non-conforming aspects of this character that a standard reading of this film misses, making Shraya’s Tristan a more contemporary icon worthy of devotion.

“Ever since I watched Legends of the Fall as a teenager, I have felt a strong pull to the movie—its melodrama, stunning landscapes, and its protagonist Tristan Ludlow. On the surface, I was obsessed with wanting his hair, but I think I was also captivated by the ways that he was a rule breaker. It’s been strange to find myself back in Alberta, where the movie was originally filmed, and finally have Tristan hair (which truthfully hasn’t been the goal in recent years!). Legends of the Trans explores the ways that the influences we have in our youth imprint upon us in ways that we don’t even realize.” – Vivek Shraya

Vivek Shraya and Naomi Potter in conversation Wednesday October 27, 7pm, free.

On-line or in-person – to be confirmed. Join artist Vivek Shraya and Esker director/curator Naomi Potter in a conversation about photography, music, storytelling, hair, devotion, queering both Brad Pitt and Tristan Ludlow, rule breaking, and being loved.

In the Esker Project Space, at street-level on 9th Ave SE Safely accessible from public sidewalk & atrium