<p>‘Tree Becoming an Object of Worship’ is an exercise in love through lending of attention, a salutation to the mutual attraction of feminine energies, a process of slow alchemy. </p> <p>Relationship to lesbian identity: As a trans* man who loves other men, I identify as gay, or queer. I was raised by a lesbian mother and briefly identified as a lesbian pre-transition, when I was in high school. In the years since starting my transition, I understand queerness as an ever-changing field. A process of always becoming. I think that each person has, within them, masculine and feminine energies that are always in a state of emergence, recession, negotiation, and change. </p> <p>Bio: Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of a forthcoming book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). Duplan is the founding curator for the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color. As an independent curator, he has facilitated artist projects in Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, and Reykjavík. Duplan’s video and performance work has been shown at Flux Factory, Daata Editions, the 13th Baltic Triennial in Lithuania, Mathew Gallery, NeueHouse, the Paseo Project, and will be exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in L.A in 2020. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He now works as Program Manager at Recess</p>