Jacob Clayton

Self Portrait | Vitruvian Tran

Photo-based mixed media

"Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's illustration and a letter written to me, this is my take on the Western ideal of the 'perfect male.’

Words cannot adequately express what it’s like to go through life in the wrong body. The turbulence of confusion, desperation, fear, and isolation creates a sustained trauma from which I had found very little escape. But that all changed when I began to depict the fracture visually through art.

Gazing into the lens of my own life’s complexities, I point the camera at myself to document the double standards, hidden curricula, systemic micro-aggressions, and profoundly destructive groupthink about gender identity, expression, and expectation—from every side. Through this imagery, I seek to better understand the truths about myself and the world. And to be understood."

— Jacob Clayton

About the artist

Jacob Clayton

American

As a self-taught visual artist, Jacob Clayton uses photography, video, and mixed media as means to expand the vocabulary that challenges Euro-hetero-white-centric expectations and cultural representations of gender identity and expression. His work often chronicles a therapeutic journey through recovery from complex trauma and the road to gather and assemble reclaimed pieces of a life lived for decades as a gay transgender man in America. His work has been shown at the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival in San Francisco, CA, the Northampton Center for the Arts in Northampton, MA, Monmouth University Center for the Arts in West Long Branch, NJ, The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, and the United Arts Council in Raleigh, NC.