A skeletal horse posed in mid-gallop oscillates up and down on a mixed wood-and-metal platform machine. The moving sculpture depicts a prize-winning horse whose racing career clearly began long ago, given her heavy decoration. A burgundy ribbon hanging from the base of her neck—one of a few dozen—says, “HONORARY CHAMPION.” A deep cobalt blue one reads, “3RD TO BLAME,” resting from off her rump. On the surface, she is a winner, but underneath the souvenirs of her career the horse is all bones—perhaps tired and pushing until she gives out. Yes, she’s in constant motion. No, she isn’t going anywhere.
This horse sculpture, titled, “Run For The Roses” was the orbital piece of a recent exhibition at Sargent’s Daughter, the contemporary art gallery at the cusp of Tribeca and Chinatown. Created by Brooklyn-based artist and fashion designer Gogo Graham, the body of work “Do I Make You Proud?” was her debut solo art show since her departing pivot from working as a fashion designer. It opened on January 10 and closed on February 15.
Graham, a Japanese-American artist, is renowned in New York City as a champion of trans and gender-expansive communities, having strictly cast trans models for all her shows. In 2016, she made waves for her fashion collection’s commentary on anti-trans violence, and in 2022 even cast Euphoria star Hunter Schafer to close the show. Throughout Graham’s career the throughline had always been the mentorship and motherhood of Cecilia Gentili, New York City’s trans Argentinian luminary.
In February of last year, a sudden void filled the city when Gentili died of acute intoxication—of which two men pleaded guilty in September of distributing fentanyl-laced heroin to Gentili. Graham’s exhibit at Sargent’s Daughter was her first solo art show, and her first body of work since Gentili’s death. “Do I Make You Proud?” was an explicit question directed to Gentili herself.
Gentili was the founder of Trans Equity Consulting, an organization that centered trans women of color, sex workers, immigrants, and incarcerated people. Her book Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist, won the 2023 Stonewall Book Award just a year prior to her death. Having stolen the scene in all of her appearances on Pose as Ms. Orlando, Gentili was in the midst of an Off-Broadway run of her own one-woman show, Red Ink. In 2021, she helped Callen Lorde form Cecilia’s Occupation Inclusion Network (COIN), a free healthcare program dedicated to sex workers in New York City.
“I am devastated by her absence, and still find myself reaching out for her, usually at night, asking her for various things, waiting for answers,” Graham confessed. “She would be doing more than what I am as we spiral faster and deeper into fascism in this country. In a cowardly way, I ask her that, instead of asking what more I could or should be doing right now.”
But the question Graham proposed to Gentili was also directed towards her own birth mother, who inspired the centerpiece horse sculpture that gave Graham the idea of the entire exhibition. With the help of artist Krzysztof Pastuszka, who engineered and built three different mechanisms and three engines for its movement, “Run For The Horses,” is the namesake of a Dan Fogelburg song Graham’s mother used to sing to her as a baby.
“I always wanted to make my mom proud since as long back as I can remember,” Graham said.
Graham’s swing from fashion into art
Gentili and Graham went side-by-side to Doll Invasion in 2023, the inaugural trans party takeover of Fire Island. At the party, Graham expressed an urgent need to take a break from the fashion industry, having just finished a fashion collection that was modeled on her own sculptures.
“It started to get to the point where I was sprinting all the time and it wasn’t sustainable for me,” she said. “And I didn’t care about all of the industry things you’re supposed to care about: celebrity, press, fashion editorials, stylists, filling up stores with your clothes.”
She admitted to Gentili that she had always wanted to paint, and with a mother’s wise encouragement, Gentili urged Graham to pivot—quickly. And in true Gentili fashion, she volunteered to be a part of Graham’s pivot to art.
Within a month, on September 15, 2023 in a small upstairs gallery tucked away in Lower Manhattan, Graham put on a special art performance. Titled, Super Suckling, Graham live painted a portrait of Gentili, who performed an improvised fictional monologue about making contact with aliens along a series of events resulting in Graham’s birth, all while Brooklyn-based Salvadorian trans drag icon Chiquitita did Gentili’s makeup.
Super Suckling inspired Graham to paint with the intention of showcasing the work in 2024, all of which related to growing up in the U.S., and its media and propaganda she grew up immersed in. But Gentili’s death threw a wrench into her initial plans, “and the paintings just sort of shifted to this processing of my emotions that I had a difficult time regulating and processing otherwise,” she said, explaining how “Do I Make You Proud?” became a body of work.
“Some of the pieces were more difficult to push out, but for the most part, they came out pretty quickly. I had a lot of feelings!”
In Put Some Mustard On It, a frenzied, inhuman statuesque figure fills the canvas at the forefront of an American flag as he grabs a handful of the back of a person’s hair against his groin. Inspired by Carravaggio’s David with the head of Goliath, Graham’s painting is sexually charged, seemingly a commentary on the power dynamic and gaze of American male sexuality.
“I wanted that figure to feel like the international presence of the U.S. — strong, muscular, maybe attractive on a superficial level, but violent, brutal, self-righteous, hypocritical,” Graham explained.
In contrast, her piece Letting Down My Very Own Madonna del Latte depicts a crowned woman, one breast out, holding a baby in her arms. The pair sits regal, a gaggle of solid red and solid blue winged cherubs surrounding the mother’s throne. In light of Graham’s grief of her mother Gentili, this painting is an obvious portrait of the two.
“In this painting she’s this mythical figure—the focus. Just like she was for me in my life since I met her, someone I love deeply and also was endlessly inspired by. And I am her daughter, of course just one of many. I feel ashamed that I feel the need to claim some special chunk or piece of her love for her children as my own, that she was my mother in my own special way that I get to keep for myself, but the shame doesn’t stop me from doing it.”
It was never about being exceptional, and perhaps it never will be
In some ways, Graham’s accolades mean nothing to her. Amidst the current political climate, anti-trans bills broke the highest record in the history of legislation at 674 bills last year, with this year already beating the record at 733. Meanwhile, under Trump’s return to presidency and his emboldened Republican-majority government, a slew of relentless executive orders targeting the gender-expansive community seeks to eradicate trans people from public life.
It’s not lost on Graham that she would rather trans people be able to live fulfilling lives than be praised for her work. After all, her critique of the capitalistic American regime is the very atmosphere that “Do I Make You Proud?” lives within. As far as her role in the fashion industry goes, she said that it isn’t her intention to diss the well-intentioned praise she has gotten for her work. But for Graham, the smoke and mirrors of American propaganda has made it difficult to see the fashion industry the same. Or any industry, for that matter.
“It’s difficult for a fashion brand as a business to be anything more than that—a business. Fashion is an industry, a really giant, wasteful, exploitative, terrible beast, one that exists to generate capital,” she said. But she isn’t throwing in the towel, fashion-wise, just yet. Regardless, her return to fashion might feel contradictory. But Graham isn’t afraid of failure.
In her practice of building a better world via her art and fashion, she considers failure to be fundamental in her work. Failure for her has no negative connotation. If anything, she uses it as a tool of self-improvement. “I wish we were taught more about failure in school; I wish I knew I’d be doing it a lot in my future!” she said.
Gentili dying, in some ways, has catapulted Graham’s ethos full-throttle; she’s more critical, unwavering, and direct. On the other hand, perhaps grief has expanded her relationship with the world—it’s unfair and full of pain. Graham’s body of work doesn’t just shine light on the messy web of being alive, but also its very simple core: despite how sterile and money-hungry the U.S. is, sometimes all a worrying daughter needs is her mother’s pride—especially when she isn’t proud of herself.
“I don’t feel proud. I’m trying to practice feeling grateful rather than the normal shame and guilt that I didn’t do better. I’m grateful to be a part of the lives of those who I love and who love me, too. I think I’ll be working on this one for the rest of my days.”
