Rainn Jackson is an interdisciplinary artist and political organizer based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Their work has been shown in various galleries and publications including Amos Eno gallery in Brooklyn, Gallery Sabine in Chicago, IL, the Contemporary Cress gallery in Chattanooga, the Apothecary gallery in Chattanooga, the Activist magazine, and Chattanooga Zine Fest. They are concerned with class and LGBTQ issues. Their political and art practices inform each other and merge into one integrated practice; they reference sexuality, gender identity, kink, protests, and theory within their creative projects. This can be most clearly seen in their zine work, which aims to educate in creative ways about issues surrounding sex work, trans identity, southern culture, and similar topics.
Rainn is Stove Works’ Resident Fellow for the first half of 2023.
Cass: Why don’t you tell me about yourself?
Rainn: I’m the resident fellow here at stoveworks, I live on-site to work with the residents. My practice mostly involves video and photography, but lately I’ve also been exploring collage. My work is centered around experiences as a queer person in the South, which can kind of be a hostile experience.
C: You mentioned getting into collage recently. Have you been having any new artistic turns as you’re coming into your fellowship?
R: For a few months, I’ve been feeling stuck with the work I’m doing. I’ve been maintaining a daily project where I record monthly pictures of my body changing since I started taking testosterone. I want to explore new projects while I’m here, since that’s a side project. I’ve been thinking about the hostility towards trans people–like the recent wave of anti-trans laws. That’s something I’m starting to focus on in my practice, because it feels like basically only trans people are talking about this.
C: How is the current hostility towards trans people affecting your practice?
R: I think my art’s gotten a little more depressing recently, and maybe angry as I respond to the sociopolitical climate around me. I have some photos around here where I’ve been cutting myself out of photos and photo manipulating the empty space I left. Or others where I harshly oversaturate my body versus the rest of my surroundings. Recently, I’ve felt both invisible and overly visible as a trans person, because a lot of people don’t know about the legislation being passed against us. It’s made me more vigilant of my surroundings, too.
I’ve been watching the films of Henry Hanson, a Chicago-based transmasc filmmaker. He makes work explicitly for transmasculine audiences, which has me feeling really inspired to make work. I found this archive of queer and trans masculine filmmakers called the Otherness Archive, which is where I found Hanson’s work. I’ve been meaning to dive more into it, because unfortunately it’s really hard to find queer movies that are actually good.
C: Between your monthly self-portrait series, films and collaging, I’m picking up on archiving as a theme. Do you consider that an important part of your practice?
R: You could think of it like that. I tend to be more documentarian in my life and work, where I want to document queerness and keep queer life around me. I’ve been recording my friends’ lives since my last year of undergrad, so that’s been, what, four or five years?
C: You’ve been moving into collage, which is a more active–perhaps destructive–process than your photography. What does that do for you?
R: I’m still figuring out what collage is doing for me. I wanted to try something different when I got here, and I had a bunch of collage materials. I ended up liking what I was making.
I still plan on doing my self-portrait work every month. I also have a larger video project I’m starting where I want to get a bunch of friends together to film them asking questions directed at cis people, flipping awkward questions that they ask us back onto them. Things like, “are you on viagra?”.
I used to live farther out of the city, which would make a large collaborative project like that impossible. Now that I have this residency right in the middle of everything, I’ll be able to get people for that video project. Other than that, I’m just enjoying collaborating with the people around me. I worked on some projects with one of the January residents, Abby Banks, which I’ll be showing up in Chicago later this year.
C: Do you have anything for people to expect from you?
R: I’ve been submitting a recent series of photos about social media censorship to shows, but nothing yet! Other than that, I’m excited to be here at Stove Works.