stay here stay how stay (2024)

My first major solo exhibition, curated by Emily Critch, at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John’s, NL. January 20 to April 7.

Evoking a playful and slippery counter-historical approach to transfeminine belonging in Newfoundland and Labrador, this exhibition turns to the ocean as an archival body, to dream and speculate against outmigration and loss in the colonial historical record. Guided by mermaids as spectral trans foremothers, and using archival gestures of repair and preservation, Jefferies honours the impermanence and continuity of intergenerational transfeminine knowledge. Rural trans pleasure and touch are embodied in an assemblage of textile and wax sculptures, illustrations, woodcuts, sound, text, and projections. Responding to contemporary and historical discourse about trans and sex worker bodies, an entangled narrative of care, intimacy, and resistance emerges from the coastal margins.

Photos courtesy of Emily Critch and Daze Jefferies.