Fruit is a project I made to explore sexuality/gender identity and how it influences the world around us, and how the world around us influences sexuality/gender identity in return. I created a google form where people could reflect on their sexuality and gender identity anonymously and made posters with QR codes to this form that I put up around my university campus. While responses came in to my form, I started creating sculpture pieces of fruit from found materials like packing material, foam, plastic, and other such things that are considered trash. Then I used duct tape to make sure these materials held their form as the fruit I was creating, and paper mached them with old newspapers. After that I painted the fruit, and once they were dry I wrote the responses I had collected from my google form onto them. This fruit basket is the result; please feel free to pick them up and read them (just be gentle with these fruit)!

A note on the name: “fruit” was a slur used against the LGBT+ community for a long time, but in recent years it has been reclaimed and used in the community as a fun term to call ourselves or others affectionately. Before fruit became a slur, however, it was a term used by queer men to gently poke fun at their own femininity. We are coming full circle now with the reclaiming of the word! However, why was “fruit” the term used? Fruit are seen as soft and tender – qualities associated with femininity; that’s why it became a slur. However, fruits are so diverse, and delicious! So many different kinds, and each one can be all kinds of different sizes, colors, and consistencies. Fruit are like people, in that way: different and diverse, but all so beautiful.