Part of me lingered on this art exhibition what feels like every day since I first visited.
I felt seen. I felt reflected. I felt like I had a place I could just exist and actually, genuinely not worry. And while I’m talking about an exhibition that by its nature is temporary, that feeling of place nonetheless continues. I carry it with me, hoping to find it again in new environments. But in the meantime, the objects, creations, and assemblages I encountered in this show were ensconced in hope, at least for me.
My sense of relieving freedom is founded in honesty about who I am, even the parts I can’t fully explain. You’re suddenly reminded when you’re now out as a transgender person, as I am, that there’s a lot that is beyond the realm of neat and tidy explanation. And I’ve tried to set aside the anxiety I’ve found in the wake of that. I want to just exist, as me.
I’m no longer actually standing in the art exhibition that I’m talking about, which is at the New York City gallery LOMEX and features artworks by Enzo Iwase and Xtina Vargas. I’m sitting in my room, making my final edits to this. The air feels humid, because my windows are open. I can hear the distant hum of the roads, and I can look around right in front of me and see the seemingly random collection of objects and their forms that collectively are evidence that I was here, and that I am here. Me.
A centerpiece of the artistic showcase I’m contemplating is a collaborative work by both artists, an assemblage on the floor that evokes a bedroom or a dressing room, though it’s not fully enclosed.
In any case, large stretches of mirror that appear across a couple surfaces of it suggest a communal energy. Those surfaces rise up, perpendicular to the floor, and an immersive cavalcade of objects that are everyday but so incisively personal are spread in front of them.
There’s feminine clothing, makeup, and hormonal treatments used by transgender people (plus a bunch else). There’s also your own image when you get in front of the mirrors.
The first time I visited, I just sat in front of the artistic spread for a little bit, joining the sculptural still life. Though while alone with myself, I felt the pain, it became peaceful. It was me. Often, I just want to be seen — including by myself alone — for who I actually am, and in those moments, though nobody else was actually in the room with me, I felt as though I could just be.
The personal and the fleeting connect with their exterior world in this art. The intimate finds a place, resting in that unison.
In this art, you see communication, comfort, and connection in the slightest of instances.
It points to the freedom of taking care of the person in the mirror, putting implements like these to use. In this particular, sweeping artwork, the objects feel oriented around that unique ambition: caring for the self. The assemblage stays active across its whole breadth, each visual moment moving right into the next. You feel hope in the consistency.
The exhibition also included a piece by Vargas that was another captivating, rich assemblage called “night stand (muva),” a 2025 work. Its form approximated that of a… well, night stand, specifically the top part of it, and it was attached on one end to the gallery’s wall. Vargas’ assemblage included materials both inside the construction and on top of it, ranging from substances like bark and dirt to makeup products.
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel trepidation in the gathering of objects. I feel a worry that things could fall apart or just not quite fit together. But… they do. The art piece, like others in the exhibition, feels startlingly vulnerable, but it puts itself forward, in each material instance. The vulnerability became part of a wave of wholeness.
The exhibition also features drawings by Iwase that were honestly spectacular. One repeats the image of a mouth, overlapped on top of itself. Another in front of which I lingered depicts the skeletal workings of a car, a rose in their midst.
They merge multiple visual perspectives in a way that reminded me of the sensation of somehow occupying two visual or even physical realities at once, one not overtaking the other but both somehow developing together into, well… wherever they’re going, since sometimes it’s unclear.
Those visible facets feel as though they’re becoming something immaterial: bodily form now a sensation that puts the body itself in surprising unison with created forms like a car and an elegant shoe. You find the sensuous tangibility of touch now enmeshed within the experience of it, the background space or just an entirely different space made part of the view.
While remaining distinctly you, you become not just someone else but someplace else, even. You’re more than you were told.
“Stunt Double,” the title of this exhibition featuring Enzo Iwase and Xtina Vargas, continues through June 21 at LOMEX. Thank you to the gallery for their help in putting this together, and best wishes to the artists.
