Fluid Borders – Queering Borders

2025

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I made this cyanotype in the summer of 2025 on the banks of the Narva River, at the border between Estonia and Russia, six months after undergoing preventive cancer surgeries. Since the surgeries, I have been thinking about my body as something changed, not fixed, and about how my new queer body no longer fits easily within a binary understanding of gender. Queer approaches to biology also challenge the idea that sex and reproduction can be understood through a simple female/male division, drawing attention to the complexity and diversity of bodies and reproductive systems in the natural world.

For this work, I used plants growing along the Narva River, including ferns and yarrow, together with my own body. Some of these plants have reproductive and sexual characteristics that can be read through queer perspectives on biology, making them part of a wider diversity of ways of being and reproducing. I see myself as part of this landscape rather than separate from it. The river is a border for humans, but not for the plants, water or other living beings that move through and across it. Its water connects rather than separates, ignoring the political line imposed on the landscape. For me, this becomes a way to think about my changed body as fluid, connected and resistant to the boundaries imposed upon it.