HIRSTORY LESSONS
HRIS E. VARGAS’S SUPERPOWER IS PRE-SCIENCE. In 2013, a year before Laverne Cox’s cover announced the“transgender tipping point,” the interdisciplinary artist created a black-and-white broadside poster in response to the mainstreaming of the trans community, and how transness was being discussed as if it were a recent phenomenon. According to his online store, the promotional collage highlights more than 280 “hiroes & trancestors; artists & activists; the famous & the infamous; the real & the fictional; the living & the passed; those who self-identify as trans & those who predate the category.” And just above those figures, in bold sans-serif typeface, lies the
