I have been inspired by pre-Columbian wisdom and ancestral cultures/deities. Notable examples include the Tida Wena (Warao) in Venezuela, indigenous peoples of the Andes, the Kinnar/Hijra in India, and the story of goddess Quan Yin. Although I do not belong to these communities, they have inspired me to reflect on my own origins and spirituality, on who we are after leaving the physical body. As an initiated Vaishnava, I am inspired by Hindu stories of deities like Radhe Krishna and Katyayani Devi, as well as saints like Sri Lalita Sakhi Dasi (Sakhi Ma) and Sage Ashtavakra whose body was bent/ deformed (Hunchback) and people laughed aloud at his appearance.

This exploration responds to ostracism, exotification, humilliations and life-threatening situations I’ve faced as a transgender woman in both private and public spaces. In my experience, violence is neither male nor female, as both men and women are capable of causing harm. From my perspective, the most painful violence is when we hold internalise oppression against ourselves when we’re too scared to be who we truly are. The root of such to me is the lack of Love as Prem in Sanskrit. Love as the opposite of fear.

With compassion, my work navigates the inner tension between reductionism in science and the permissions of art. I am not interested in Descartes’ theory of dualism (1641), which separates mind from body, or in mechanistic paradigms like Newtonian physics that reduce the universe as a machine composed of discrete, interacting parts. Through lived experience, I have come to see how scientific reductionism mirrors social biases and fixed categories.

In contrast, quantum thinking is for me a conceptual tool to move beyond rigid dualisms “us versus them” or “man versus nature”.  A holistic concept, emphasising entanglement and the observer’s connection to the observed. Max Planck, a pioneer of quantum theory, showed that energy exists in discrete packets, or ‘quanta.’ He later stated, “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness” (The Observer, 1931). His work suggested an interconnected universe.