An art exhibition exploring a Cumbrian transgender woman’s story of overcoming adversity has opened.
Grace Oni Smith, 35, of West Cumbria, has been in residence as an oil painter at Florence Arts Centre in Egremont for eight months, which has led to the launch of her first solo exhibition.
Im Chaos Der Spiegel – German for In the Chaos of Mirrors – explores Grace’s ‘beautifully bleak’ and chaotic life spent working as an international showgirl, performance artist, sex worker and model.
It focuses in particular on a period of Grace’s life spent living in Berlin, where she suffered a mental breakdown that led her to return to her teenage home of West Cumbria.
Grace said: “I grew up in West Cumbria and I had a difficult time as a trans kid here. I left when I was 15 and pretty much packed my bags and ran away as soon as I possibly could.
“I’ve lived many lives, shall we say, and I’ve done a lot of different things and had some amazing experiences, but the knife cuts both ways, and basically I found myself in a position where I wasn’t able to support myself anymore and I was very mentally unwell and dealing with some quite serious addiction issues.
“I ended up coming back to West Cumbria to live with my mother, and I have been on this journey of mental health healing and sobriety ever since.
“Being brought into the artist community at Florence is funny in some ways, as I’ve come a full circle.
“The place I ran away from as a teenager has actually become integral in my recovery.”
When Grace first left West Cumbria she found herself in the world of queer nightlife and eventually moved to Berlin to continue to pursue her goal of working as a performance artist.
She said: “I have always been an artist, but when I left home, I became involved very deeply with queer nightlife. So my output then was much more performative then and I was using my body as the canvas.
“I think I was drawn to Berlin because I was very much so a party girl and I wanted my Weimar Republic Sally Bowles moment. Berlin also has this reputation and is known as a queer art mecca.
“But like everything in life, there’s a duality that cuts both ways and yes there was a sense of freedom and liberation but then there is the dark side of that.
“There’s a lot of drugs and a lack of boundaries and I think that is a dark side of the queer experience. Pretty much 10 out of 10 times for queer people we live our lives oppressed by other people’s boundaries and as a tonic to that we decide to live in a way that is boundary-less.
“But it’s actually not a healthy way to live and I think we have to really explore ourselves and ask ourselves where our boundaries are and when to stop and when enough is enough.
“For me it really did come to a point where I was burnt out, used up and unable to stand on my own two feet anymore.”
Grace added that she had first been introduced to partying while living as a teenager in West Cumbria.
She said: “Don’t get me wrong, I loved hedonism and I was a very very high functioning drug addict for most of my life. I was introduced at a very young age to drugs and partying while I was living in West Cumbria.
“When I was a child, artists who were using their bodies as a means of making art really resonated with me as a trans person. I always felt a disconnect in my mind and my body, and with that disconnect I was able to use it in a way to make art.
“When I left at 15, every single person around me in my life told me that as a trans person I was an abomination, so when I went into these club spaces all of a sudden I was a goddess and everyone was celebrating me.
“To have been someone who had to physically fight to just exist and then go to a club in London where everyone is like me, that for a young person was just completely intoxicating.
“That became my lifestyle and it took me to great places and when I was working as a performance and cabaret artist I could go to any city across the world and put a message on Instagram and I’d have people to party with.
“Because I was so high functioning for so many years I was the life and soul of the party, but for the last five years I spent in Berlin I wasn’t at all and it was a very difficult journey.
“But it’s one that I have no regrets or shame over. I am very proud of where I am now and thankful of the experiences that I had.
“All of those dualistic experiences and the beautiful, the bleak and the darkness and hedonism of it all, they all informed me as the artist I am now.”
Grace will be three years sober next February and added that painting had proved a crucial part of her healing journey.
She said: “My creative energy has manifested in lots of different ways throughout my life, but oil painting practice has become something really vital.
“It feels the most right and I’ve come to a point in my life where putting myself out there physically just isn’t who I am anymore. So for me to be hidden away and working on these things and putting my feelings and intention into physical objects, it feels more therapeutic to me.
“In the past I was putting myself into positions to be physically critiqued and it wasn’t until this journey of healing and ultimately transcendence and all that work that I’ve been able to find my own boundaries and self respect and limitations and that has been a very healthy worthwhile journey to go on.
“But when I’m actually painting, I’m not thinking about the past. What I’m doing is being very present in the moment with paint. It’s about creating a flow space and being in the moment with paint is much more a subconscious thing than a deliberate act.
“I think that flow space is a space I might have previously inhabited through clubbing and dancing all night and all these maybe not as healthy dynamics.
“It’s so funny how through this therapy and recovery I’ve found painting, which is probably the healthiest addiction I’ve ever had.
“It’s a compulsion, I have to paint every day and it’s so rewarding, its almost like my language to communicate with the universe and myself.”
While her work explores themes of horror, desperation, depravity, addiction, trauma, loss and deep grief – it also explores love, rebuilding, growing and ultimately transcendence.
She describes her work in the exhibition as memory spaces that have been manoeuvred, processed and learned from.
She said: “My art practice has gone from being something very private to something I’m really sharing with the world now and this period of my life has culminated in a body of work that is the exhibition.
“But there’s definitely nerves in my first solo show. They’re there because when I had my difficulties and serious mental breakdown, I was at a point where the way I was living my life and the priorities that I thought I had in my life, it all came to a point where it was unfeasible to move forward.
“Everything I thought was me smashed into a million shards of glass so tiny that I couldn’t be put back together again. So It’s been this process of rebuilding, therapy relearning and healing.
“I think because I’ve done so much therapeutic work and sobriety all of those journeys, who I am now is all very new, so to be putting myself out there again creatively as an artist is all incredibly nerve-wracking.
“There’s that saying and it’s incredibly corny, but you don’t learn anything staying in your comfort zone. I think fact that there’s fear there shows how different I am as a person and how important that sense of safety, stability, peace and creativity is to me.
“Before I would have just jumped in. I always used to say give yourself to the universe, but if you’re just being completely fearless and always jumping and saying yes you can end up very burnt out, and that’s what happened in my life.
“Now on the juncture with the exhibition, there is a lot of fear and nerves. But I think they are all positive things, because it is so important to me and it’s a valuable journey to go on.”
Grace said that making peace with West Cumbria has also been an important part of her healing journey.
She added: “I’m actually very interested now in funnelling my art practice through West Cumbria and encouraging community projects as it’s something I’m very passionate about.
“On my first exhibition night there were some queer people there with their families and I spoke with them about building a creative and artistic community and a queer scene here for young people.
“For me, Cumbria is a place where queer people might feel the need to move away and I think that’s because things are happening here, but there is a serious lack of community.
“I think a lot of queer people who live in the county are quite disbanded and we’re off in our own little pockets somewhere.
“There’s lots happening in Carlisle, but in West Cumbria it’s still very much a no man’s land and it’s important to me, now I’m able, to be as visible and outspoken as possible.
“I can be an example of someone from this region who is making art in the face of adversity and continuing to do so. If that can inspire any young people to make art or reach out so they’re not alone, then that’s my reason for being.”
Im Chaos Der Spiegel is open to visitors at Florence Arts Centre until Saturday July 20.
Entry is free to the exhibition on Fridays between 11am until 4pm and on Saturday and Sundays from 11am until 3pm.
