SEXUAL INTERMEDIARIES

Lylou Chabanet

Exhibition

See it On Campus: Level 2

SEXUAL INTERMEDIARIES, 35mm film on inkjet prints, 41in x 36.5 in (5in x 6.5in each), 2025

“Sexual Intermediaries” is a term coined by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, founder of the Berlin Institute of Sexual Research to describe individuals that did not fit traditional and heteronormative categories. In this case, “SEXUAL INTERMEDIARIES” is an analogue photographic typology of my first month recovering from top-surgery. One frame for each passing day, made with the specific intention of creating evidence of transgender existence as an acts of defiance in the face of historical, medical and political erasure.

Being born in the 2000s, it has always been evident that I was growing up robbed of representation. Still now as a queer adult, I experience a void when it comes to finding examples of queer and particularly trans elders. The absence of a queer past inevitably invalidates and prevents projections of queer future.

I use photography to document transgender ways of living, starting with my own medical transition. Shot with the help of my partner in our everyday space, the repetitive ritual quickly became a routinely act of care beyond simple documentation, developing an intimate relationship to the performative camera I consider analogue cameras and a perception of film as adjacent to a bodily-time object.

My work aims to produce photographic proof of queer existence, joy, and milestones as an intentional, public act of ideological resistance and defiance. This timeline is meant for a future queer audience in search of guides and references.

Queer bodies and ways of living have always existed and will never stop existing.

Lylou Chabanet

Lylou Chabanet (he/him/his) works with photography and text, attempting to engage in a discussion between the two media to address matters related to gender, everyday intimacy, the body, repetition and memory. Sitting between an analogue and digital practice, he oscillates from meticulous photoshopped inkjet prints to embracing the unpredictability of alternative processes, often making use of textual material as a grounding element that speaks beyond gallery walls.

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