Prismatic views: a look at the growing field of transgender art and visual culture studies

Transgender art and visual culture studies is a quickly growing field, and we present it to readers of this themed issue less as a linear discourse or a set of parameters than as a prism, with no clear temporal progression or geopolitical center. In this introduction, we not only announce the articles in this issue and discuss their convergences and divergences but also survey works in transgender studies that have proven critical to discussions of the visual and material within transgender cultures. Reading what follows, we hope any shared notion of transgender art and visual culture is expanded rather than contracted – that we find new ideas rather than merely those that reconfirm our existing sense of things or serve a monolithic construct that limits our future imaginary.