The Right Brain of Darkness | Bring Your Own Body:

Work by Tuesday Smillie

The Morley Alcove, Magill Library
Haverford College

*Runs concurrently with Bring Your Own Body; join Tuesday Smillie and curators Jeanne Vaccaro and Stamatina Gregory for a walkthrough of The Right Brain of Darkness on Friday, October 28 from 2:30–4:00 p.m. as part of the Queer Genealogies of the Normal conference.

The Right Brain of Darkness is a series of watercolor drawings celebrating Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic sci-fi novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, claiming the book as a proto-transfeminist text. With this project, I am investigating Le Guin’s use of her creative practice as a radical tool, as she envisions other worlds and ways of being. Simultaneously I am considering how the cultural significance and meaning of this text has evolved as popular views around gender identity have shifted. —Tuesday Smillie

*The Left Hand of Darkness, 1972*
2013
Series: *The Right Brain of Darkness*
9 1/4” x 6 1/4”
Watercolor on paper

*The Left Hand of Darkness, 2010*
2015
Series: *The Right Brain of Darkness*
10 1/8” x 6 1/2”
Watercolor, gouache on paper

*The Left Hand of Darkness, 1975*
2015
Series: *The Right Brain of Darkness*
9 1/2” x 6 1/2” Watercolor, gouache on paper

*The Left Hand of Darkness, 1980*
2012
Series: *The Right Brain of Darkness*
9” x 6 1/2”
Watercolor, acrylic on paper

*The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969*
2016
Series: *The Right Brain of Darkness*
10” x 6 1/4”
Watercolor on paper

*The Left Hand of Darkness, 1983*
2013
Series: *The Right Brain of Darkness*
9” x 6 1/4”
Watercolor on paper

*The Left Hand of Darkness, 2006*
2013
Series: *The Right Brain of Darkness*
10 1/2” x 8 1/4”
Watercolor on paper

*Duisters Linkerhand, 1971*
2016
Series: *The Right Brain of Darkness*
9 5/8” x 6 3/4”
Watercolor, ink on paper

Tuesday Smillie is a visual artist, living and working in Brooklyn NY. At the core of her work is a question about the individual and the group: the binary of inclusion and exclusion. This focus undoubtedly stems from Smillie’s experience navigating the world as a transgender woman. Her work has shown throughout the United States. In New York City she has shown at Artist Space, Judson Church, and the A.I.R. Gallery. In 2014 Smillie was inaugurated as the first Resident Artist of the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art. She was also awarded an Art Matters grant that year. Recently her work has been featured on Artnet.com and in VISION, a Chinese culture magazine. In 2016 she was an artist-in-residence at Kala Art Institute.

Organized by Haverford College Libraries in conjunction with the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery exhibition Bring Your Own Body: transgender between aesthetics and archives, curated by Jeanne Vaccaro with Stamatina Gregory. Supported by the John Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities.