Eclipsing Erasure

Eclipsing Erasure (2025) is a body of work by Denyse R. Davis (she/they), created in direct response to the political and social systems that target, suppress, and endanger trans lives, and all who live beyond the myth of the gender binary. This exhibition is both tribute and resistance: a celebration of trans resilience, beauty, grief, power, and joy.
The work conceptually explores the gender spectrum—portraits shift, colors bleed and transform, mirrors fracture and reflect. These pieces don’t ask what is your gender?—they ask what do you believe gender is? As Kate Bornstein reminds us, “There are as many permutations of gender as there are people who believe they have a gender.” Gender, like a river, cannot be held still. Each time we return to it, it has shifted.
Alongside these abstract reflections are portraits of trans icons across history—artists, warriors, writers, healers—whose lives expand the narrative. Lili Elbe’s story challenges the belief that womanhood depends on anatomy. Ajita Wilson reveals the layered intersections of marginalization, while Alan L. Hart unsettles assumptions about identity and desire. Figures like Dahteste defy categorization entirely. These portraits invite us to question the rules we’ve inherited—and consider who they serve.
As of 2025, more than 100 anti-trans bills have passed in the United States, with nearly 1,000 introduced. These are not symbolic—they are acts of violence with real, devastating consequences. Eclipsing Erasure was created in this context. It is not neutral. It is a refusal.
Each painting is made with acrylic for its immediacy and flexibility. Davis’s signature style of visible brushstrokes, layered textures, and vivid color echoes the nonlinear process of becoming. They approach painting the way they approach gender: as a practice of movement, intuition, and continual return.
Eclipsing Erasure is not just a record of what’s been erased—
but a declaration that our presence endures, and the story unfolds anew.