disunified

A .PNG print-ready digital download of 'disunified' by Mercy Thokozane Minah.

Additional context for the piece:

With ‘disunified’ I wanted to create a piece that conveys my personal experience of being a Black, queer and nonbinary person who has survived persecution, conversion therapy and a myriad of other harm specifically related to my marginalization. For several years, in my teens and early twenties, I lived as a closeted queer and trans person. I wrote myself through inner turmoil, conflict and questioning of my viability as a human being and into internal-validation, agency, autonomy and radical self-acceptance, all across the internet and in every journal I could hide between mattresses and folded clothes. But on the outside, in the physical, flesh world, I alternated between donning church-specific clothing chosen by my mother, hairstyles that fit the mould of my AGB and clandestine connections with people whose identities mirrored mine. A very real fragmentation of self defined this era of my life. Where I felt there were parts of me that fully belonged to me and represented what felt like the true me, and other parts of me that belonged to the people I felt beholden to for my very existence. This was perhaps one of the most challenging pieces to create. A piece informed by a selfie I had taken earlier in the year, before my 33rd birthday, conveying my hard-won body-confidence along with the glowing wounds on the parameters of the various fragments of my disunified self.