Grace Lawson is a queer, lens-based artist from Houston, TX. They are both a visual and performing artist, with a previous six years of experience as a professional performer that continues to heavily influence their photographic work. As they discovered their lesbian identity, Lawson began to find comfort in the artwork created by other members of the LGBTQ+ community. Their work is a physical manifestation of their desire to build an archive of sapphic artists in an attempt to bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap that they felt existed within the canon of art history. Sapphic identity, defined as women who are attracted to other women, acts as the intersection between two historically suppressed identities: Homosexuality and womanhood. Existing at this intersection has caused sapphic history to go largely unrecorded within the historical canon, which is not an intentional act of malice, but rather because the uncaring nature of a Western patriarchal society has deemed love between women, as expressed by women, to be unimportant, and in that way entirely unworthy of remembering. With a title taken from the poet Sappho herself, every image is composed of a self-portrait layered with queer themes, whether these themes be represented through archival artworks created by sapphic women or various forms of queer symbols. The use of handmade collages embeds historic artwork into their own skin, half covering them and half taking away pieces of themself. The presented history becomes intrinsically locked into the body of a young queer person, and the resulting images become a symbiotic relationship between past and present. This project highlights how as Lawson is influenced by those that came before them, it also becomes their duty to carry their legacy forward, with the physical act of collaging multiple prints together acting as a labor of love for their identity.

CV.