Feature Friday w/ Dena Igusti
How is your work informed by your identities?
It’s impossible to separate my work from my identities. My identities force me to be completely honest about the narratives in my work. Most of my writing is about how I navigate grief and anticipated loss as a queer trans non binary indonesian muslim survivor of female genital mutilation. I have to account for several losses: the deaths of muslims due to rampant islamophobia, indonesians due to environmental racism, and close loved ones due to socioeconomic disparity and gentrification in NYC. On top of all of that, I have to navigate reclaiming bodily autonomy and agency in my gender expression as a non binary survivor of female genital mutilation, who is constantly bound by womanhood because of that trauma.
All of these things are very specific. They inform one another. I can’t talk about being Indonesian without mentioning being queer. Understanding queer identity without mentioning Islam. I can’t package each identity into a singular thing, even though oftentimes I am pressured to as a writer and artist. My identities force me to showcase nuance, uncertainty, and impulsivity in my work, which isn’t always granted to marginalized artists on public platforms. I am able to describe and visually show through form, style, dialogue, and line breaks the ways I feel whole and disconnected in my identities. I showcase that there is still significance in fragmented information. I try not to pretend I know everything and artificially fill in missing gaps between my narrative. Rather, I hone in on what I do and do not know, how to build on both, and how to create entirely new information that combines and transcends these binary components.
What art helped you come to accept your own LGBTQ+ identities? Which LGBTQ+ artists inspire you and your work?
God where do I even begin? Throughout my life, while it took time for me to accept and affirm my own identity, there was so much art, especially music that affirmed that I can be whoever and whatever I want. Paradise Kiss, a manga created by Ai Yazawa, was the first time I ever saw an Asian trans woman, and listening to bands such as An Cafe, The Gazette, Miyavi, Nightmare, and more, where all of them used androgyny and gender fluidity really opened up a lot for me. When I got into poetry, Alok Vaid Menon and Janani Balasubramanian empowered me to be honest about how I felt about gender, how I didn’t feel like a girl but wasn’t necessarily a boy. In poetry, Roya Marsh, Fatimah Asghar, Ocean Vuong, Kaveh Akbar, Paige Lewis, Danez Smith, Torrin A. Greathouse, and more inspire my writing,, whether it’s poetry, playwriting, or screenwriting. Right now, hyperpop is really crucial in my work and influences the themes of reclaiming perception and having versions of you out in the world, with SOPHIE and Laura Les of 100 gecs being my main influences.
But what continually inspires my work and art are the pivotal artists I am proud to call my friends and kin: (in chronological order of meeting them) Teta Alim, founder of Buah Zine, Ray Jordan Achan, Mohammad Murtaza, ESTHERFROMNEWYORK, Trace DePass, Anastasia Alphina, Nat, founder of Sunshadow Healing, Nova A., Josh Savory, Kaleigh O’Keefe, MJ Malpiedi, Lyd Havens, and so many more.
Please speak to the importance of being proud, and what Pride month means to you…
Being proud of my queerness was frankly a really hard journey at first. There was a point in my life where I had to hide being queer for a really long time because it wasn’t entirely accepted in the communities I grew up in. In order for me to maintain a connection to those communities, specifically muslim and Indonesian, I had to reserve that part of myself. But now my queerness has become a focal point in how I approach and redefine my life, how I connect to other people, and how I am more rooted in myself and who I am. If it wasn’t for queer people of color, queer muslims and queer Indonesians, I wouldn’t understand the entirety of my familial, personal, and community histories.
I understand that as an artist, I have a particular public role/responsibility in who and what I align with, especially during this month. While corporations love to use this time to shove rainbow products down our throats, Pride month is so much more than the opportunity for companies to virtue signal. It is a reminder of the long history of the ongoing survival and resistance of LGBTQ+ folks, both globally and domestically. The ways I currently navigate gender and trans masculinity in the platforms I have wouldn’t be possible without black and brown trans women who led our liberation movements. Pride month is a time to understand our collective queer histories, as well as the influence of the western gaze, colonialism, and imperialism in how we understand gender and sexuality.