Dykes for Trans Rights

This work is both a banner and a quilt, digitally embroidered on a brother PRX, hand embellished with beads and sequins, quilted on a handi-quilter, bound and trimmed with hand made wool tassles.

The piece draws together two threads of interests from across my PhD research on quilting the lesbian archive. The work is a re-visioning of a lesbian-feminist, Sappho banner held in the collections at Glasgow Womens’s Library as part of the Lesbian Archive and Information Center Collection. The providence of the banner is unknown, and something I am trying to find out. However there is footage of the banner being used on a ‘stop the clause’ march in Manchester (section 28, a bill criminalising the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality as a ‘pretended family relationship). The footage is part of Video 28, made by Vera Productions in 1988 held as part of the Cinenova film archive.

The text across the top of the banner reading: ‘DYKES FOR TRANS RIGHTS’ is inspired by trans-lesbian solidarity in the Rebel Dykes community. At the Art & Archive Show there were flyers with this message and an invitation to attend trans pride with the Rebel Dykes the following week, where the Rebel Dykes marched under a banner with the same text.

The banner-quilt reflects on interconnected moments in time in lesbian history, bringing together two important lesbian banners from different time periods. It is statement on the importance of lesbian-trans solidarity in this difficulty moment, whilst acknowledging that the two identities are of course always intersecting, and often synonymous.