Ra Ames
Polymorphous Transgressions
Class of: 2029
Major: Integrated Design BFA
Medium: Collage, charcoal, oil paint
Faculty: Nathan Bond
Prompt: Create a portrait or series of portraits that explores the concept of transformation through the lens of self-representation. This final project synthesizes the technical skills, conceptual frameworks, and critical thinking you've developed throughout the semester, centering on the portrait as a site for exploring identity, change, and visual storytelling. This is not simply "a picture of a face." Portraiture functions as identity construction, psychological exploration, social commentary, documentation of change, and personal authorship. Your work should demonstrate conceptual depth, technical skill, intentional design, and meaningful engagement with art historical precedents.
This self-portrait emerges from Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory, using collage to explore how we embody our environments and exist in relation to multispecies entanglements rather than as isolated selves. The vibrant, fragmented materials of the body refuse singular narratives of identity, while the face—rendered in charcoal—introduces deliberate fragility. As a transgender person, self-portraiture has often felt fraught, but here I turn to realism as an act of archiving, documenting my features at this moment, knowing they will transform through transition. The charcoal becomes both record and ritual, its impermanence acknowledging that transition is not a destination but an ongoing becoming—fragile, tender, and profoundly sacred.