Eli Brown
Another Mother: A Database for All Trans Organisms on Earth
2022
Eli Brown (he/him/his or they/them/theirs) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work in queer ecologies spans sculpture, writing, drawing, social practice, and public art. His practice revolves around understanding trans-ness as a lineage, and as an evolutionary phenomenon that is not always human.Their work has been exhibited at venues such as the deCordova Museum Biennial, Flux Factory, Franconia Sculpture Park, and Creative Time X. Eli’s exhibitions and public projects have received press through Sculpture Magazine, CULTURED, WGBH’s Open Studio, and Chronicle 5 News. Their writing and work have been published in NiCHE: Network in Canadian History and Environment, Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, the upcoming Artists and The Practice of Agriculture (Routledge), and the long-running, queer, sex-ed comic, Not Your Mother’s Meatloaf.
Eli received an MFA from SMFA at Tufts in 2018. Since then, he has taught courses at Montserrat College of Art, Maine College of Art and Design, and UMass Lowell.
Another Mother is a free online database and educational tool. Users can search for information on plants, fungi, and animals who express multiple sexes, and then record sightings of these organisms on an interactive map. Through acts of careful observation and documentation, we gain knowledge and insight into the complex ways in which the natural world has been utilizing transsexuality as an evolutionary strategy for hundreds of millions of years.
The database is a work-in-progress. Visit anothermother.co to explore and contribute!
Please contact me at eliyellow@gmail.com if you’d like to volunteer.
Photographing the split-gill mushroom, growing on a Locust tree. This fungi has more than twenty eight thousand sexes.
Eli and a workshop participant discuss the reproductive parts of the clematis plant, which can have both stamens and pistils on one flower.
Gif of Another Mother database
Screenshot of Another Mother database.
Participants draw the clematis flower, vines, and leaves to better understand the structure of the plant.