Name: Yves B. Golden
Age: 26 
Preferred Medium: the Word. 
Current City: Los Angeles

Outside of your work, what do you care about?

I care about sending a message to every Black person that they are entitled to the utmost care and kindness. That they deserve love and attention. That their pain, rage and grief matters. That there are flowers in the dark. This brought me to the work I currently do and the work I've been doing for some time now. 

How are you feeling?

Truthfully, I'm feeling a bit tired and maimed by systemic transphobia. I'm feeling deeply angry and speechless at times. I wonder about where a person like me is meant to put the anger. What containers are there for my rage and my worry? I wonder about what material that container would be made of - what's durable enough, light enough, holy enough to house my temper and to transmute it into something Good?

What would you say is the driving force behind your work?

Aside from my expression mattering and my life mattering -- I make art because of my undying sense of wonder. I have found that worlds are ceaselessly giving an observable rhyme-scheme. Seeking and responding to this flow is my praxis. 

You don't. But it's necessary to look things/life in the face and to, at times, put them/it away.  

If you could create your own clothes to work in, what would they look like?

For one, I would work in a very rainy and cool place that had lots of open windows. So, I would wear lengthy velvet and silk drapery. And also really bulky knits. I would work in blankets lol. 

The Black Panthers and other militant Black radicals. 

What’s inspiring you right now?

The resilience and power of my Black Trans sisters. Seeing us thrive gives me power. 

Photographer: Ira Dritsas Chernova