Trancestry: 10 Years of the Museum of Transology13 Images
After entering TRANCESTRY: 10 Years of the Museum of Transology, a new exhibition at London’s Lethaby Gallery, the first thing you see is a mannequin wearing a floor-length faux-tiger coat. This garment, which belonged to the Black trans model and cabaret performer Zsarday Forde, is displayed alongside a video of Forde performing and artefacts from other trans artists of colour, including cabaret performer Mzz Kimberley, author and playwright Travis Alabanza, and choreographer and visual artist Nando Messias.
Zsarday Forde died of a drug overdose on their 40th birthday in 2009, long before the Museum of Transology’s founding in 2014. But Mzz Kimberley, a close friend of hers, later donated the coat to the collection along with one of her own dresses.
The exhibition celebrates the tenth anniversary of Museum of Transology and its archive of trans material culture, which was founded in Brighton and now has a permanent home at London’s Bishopsgate Institute. The collection features an assortment of objects from around the UK, including garments, protest signs, artistic works, and everyday objects, many labelled with a description from the person who donated them.
For E-J Scott, the museum’s founder, it was a deliberate choice to spotlight Black trans histories. “ Right at the front of the exhibition, you’ve got evidence that Black trans women have been saving their own trans history even when museums haven’t been doing it for them,” they tell me at the exhibition’s launch last week.
The core of the exhibition is the elevation of seemingly ordinary objects into the annals of history. Some objects have clear meanings – such as a rainbow kippah [a Jewish cap] with pro-Palestine and pro-refugee badges, or a denim jacket covered in pro-trans patches donated by artist and filmmaker Fox Fisher. “I hand screen-printed all of these,” Fisher tells Dazed. “My mum helped to design and to sew it all on for me.” Many of their documentary films are also displayed on screens at the exhibition, including footage from Trans Kids Deserve Better activists who scaled the facade of NHS England’s headquarters last summer.
Some objects have descriptions that subvert expectations, such as a tiny pair of dirtied ballet slippers donated by a trans man who started dancing at age four and loved it so much he “refused to quit” after transitioning. A wedding ring symbolises not eternal love, but the self-acceptance its wearer found in a relationship that was “meant to be but never meant to last.”
This is an exhibition, and a collecting project, and a community project, and a museological project and a curatorial project, that can contribute to how you work with vulnerable, misrepresented and marginalised communities more broadly
A section of the exhibition dedicated to families is full of mundane objects whose descriptions imbue them with great meaning. For Scott, it was important to “dispel the idea that trans kids have a terrible time of it and parents of trans kids don’t want to look after them or reject their experiences”. They say that parents and recently out trans kids often use the museum as a way to facilitate difficult conversations.
The exhibition models a range of ways family members can demonstrate acceptance for their trans relatives: a glass with an L on it, representing the owner’s new name, was a gesture of support from their aunt; the description next to a tube of lipstick reveals that it was “from my sister, who was the first person to support my transition”.
The exhibition isn’t about transphobia, but doesn’t shy away from it either. A memorial section commemorates trans people who died too young, some of them named, like Brianna Ghey, and others anonymous, like a member of Trans Kids Deserve Better who died by suicide last year.
The presence of a vial of bathtub estrogen with a Ukrainian postage stamp reminds us that access to NHS healthcare has always been limited, but also that trans people have the power to take medicine into their own hands. It is one of many hormonal medications on display, including an arrangement of hundreds of packets of testosterone gel, which shows that transition is not a singular choice but the continual exercising of agency over a long period of time.
It is ultimately this agency that shines through throughout “Trancestry”. One of the museum’s most unusual objects is Scott’s chest tissue, preserved in two large jars after his top surgery. “I wanted to use this as an opportunity to show that human remains must be collected and shown by consent,” they say. “ Our museums in the UK are full of human remains that have been collected non-consensually, particularly at the height of the British empire.” As much as the Museum of Transology is an intervention in archiving and preserving trans history, they also want it to contribute to these kinds of conversations and push forward the field of museum studies.
Scott is passionate about being a role model for other curators looking to do similar work. “ This is not just a trans exhibition,” they said. “This is an exhibition, and a collecting project, and a community project, and a museological project, and a curatorial project, that can contribute to how you work with vulnerable, misrepresented and marginalised communities more broadly.”
TRANCESTRY: 10 Years of the Museum of Transology is on display at the Lethaby Gallery, 11 March – 11 May 2025
