BIO

joshua p collins was born and raised in Washington State. He attended Central Washington University for his BFA and BA, and is currently finishing up his MFA at Montana State University.

His work has been exhibited regionally and online and surrounds the understanding of FtM transgender gendermaking, coming out, and persona development through the abstract psychological landscape and book arts. He is most interested in subjects of queer art, sociology, the plasticity of identity, and the perceptions of the “deadname” around previously assumed transgender personhoods.

As an instructor, joshua is interested in the feedback loop of making, communication, and interpretation through student-focused assignments and and emphasis on interpersonal relations. Art is not made within a bubble of the self, nor is it contained by the walls of the classroom.

Outside of teaching, artmaking, and researching, joshua is an avid reader and gamer. His favorites often connect back to his research interests.

ARTIST STATEMENT

What is the start and end of an identity? What constitutes that identity? Where is that identity in check, on display, or completely removed? MY BODY IS THE LAND AND THE LAND IS MY BODY.

My studio practice is rooted in the search for a visual transgender sign system that goes beyond representation of the body as the default. Gendermaking and the becoming process that being transgender grants does not stop at the body, it leaks into the landscape and spaces in which the subject resides. The emotions that we have affect the space we exist in.

My process is guided by the practice of repetition and space-creation, a printing and painting of identity. I work from a combination of the abstraction of memory and the replication of reference, building a space until it becomes something else entirely. It is an intuitive process, in which each painting or book becomes a unique item with its own considerations despite starting from similar points or materials.

I am influenced by nature as a source of gender affirmation for it is the queerest thing in our world. We allow it to change, destroy, regrow, and cycle through appearances as a point of awe rather than villainization. Alone, away from social expectations, all sense of identity melts away and leaves behind one thing: humanhood.