Jay Lynn Gomez: Butterfly Dream

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Jay Lynn Gomez: Butterfly Dream, an exhibition of paintings and mixed-media installations that locate Gomez’s artistic practice within the context of her transition. The exhibition asks: what does it mean to exist in this new identity, instead of constantly striving to realize it? Through a series of dreamlike paintings, Gomez makes clear that community and self-acceptance are central. Butterfly Dream documents the people and places that make up the community of trans women Gomez has found in Los Angeles, all captured in her signature documentary style. The exhibition also tackles the concerns of the artist’s past work, including issues of labor and immigration, now through a trans lens. Butterfly Dream is the artist’s fifth show with the gallery, and her first exhibition post-transition mounted in Los Angeles.

Central to the exhibition is the story of the butterfly dream, a Chinese fable originally told in an ancient Taoist text. In the story, Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly happy flitting about with no knowledge of his human self. Upon waking, he recalls his dream and wonders whether he is in fact a human who had dreamt of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi. Gomez evokes the butterfly dream by constantly questioning the boundaries between dream and reality, using vibrant pinks and purples to signify dreamlike spaces and images of butterflies as a symbol of transformation and freedom.

One small self-portrait references a famous 16th-century depiction of the butterfly dream. In the original drawing, Zhuangzi dreams while slumbering on a rock. In Gomez’s version, she reclines on a bright teal bean bag, wrapped in a fuzzy pink blanket. A collaged butterfly flits through the picture plane, which is a bright pink that for the artist represents feminine dreamspace. Unlike the sleeping figure of Zhuangzi, Gomez stares out at the viewer, inviting us to inhabit the dream world alongside her. The bean bag itself appears in the gallery space, paired with a book of poetry by fellow trans artist Farrah Fang. Both the object and painting enshrine the radical importance of trans rest in the face of the current onslaught of anti-trans sentiment and legislation in this country.

Butterfly Dream captures the community of trans women Gomez has found in Los Angeles. Many of the paintings on view depict one of three anchors of this community: the TransLatin@ Coalition, the Trans Wellness Center, and the communal home for trans women where the artist resided for a time. Working from the constant stream of photographs that smartphones make possible, Gomez finds small moments of beauty and peace within a world that can often be chaotic and ugly. In her paintings, trans women laugh and dance, primp and smile and strut. They come together to receive care and build community. She has not fully left behind her past work, however: one piece captures staff vacuuming a hallway of the Trans Wellness Center, while another sees two men changing out signage in the LA Metro. These works hearken back to Gomez’s past paintings foregrounding the labor and laborers who often go unseen and unappreciated, but locates that conversation inside of a new setting.

Much of the action of these paintings takes place along Los Angeles’ Wilshire corridor. In one such work Gomez transforms a hot pink wall on the boulevard into one of the exhibition’s dream spaces: the artist confronts the viewer in the form of a full-length self-portrait, defiantly contrapposto in a magenta crop top. She stands between two figures: a construction worker in high-visibility orange represents her past work as Ramiro Gomez, which often featured construction and domestic workers as they go about their days. He strolls determinedly out of frame, as if to signal a sunset of past ways of being. To the right, a trans woman in a cheetah skirt and platform shoes uses the pink wall to drop into a twerk, confident and joyous in her body. A butterfly flits overhead, reminding us that the dream can be reality. This work, and the exhibition as a whole, seeks to accept Ramiro and to find love for the person she was, while at the same time moving joyfully into the future as Jay Lynn.

Two of the most poignant works of the exhibition seek to reconcile Gomez’s past and present selves. A small painting uses one of Gomez’s medicine boxes as a support, the pharmaceutical label just visible beneath the painted surface. Dedicated to her ex-husband, the painting takes the form of a devotional retablo – Saint Sebastian hovers in the corner, while the central self-portrait tells the story of the early stages of the breakup of their marriage. Another small painting reimagines a baby picture of Gomez with her parents, set against a soft pink background. The image is closely cropped on the three of them, two smiling parents holding up their young child. Gomez has added a pink bow to her own head, dreaming of a world in which she was able to experience girlhood from a young age. With this body of work, Gomez seeks to poetically stand up for trans lives by practicing radical acceptance and finding love for her past and present selves.