Frances Cordelia Beaver
From Delco, Frances Cordelia Beaver is a storyteller, artist and educator living and working in Philadelphia. Using video, performance, music, animation, and garment construction She builds mythological universes as messy metaphors for transgender life in Pennsylvania. She necromances old gender dysphoric performance personas in order to make peace, isolates the magical logic systems in mythologies to reconstruct the myths to her liking, and is developing a cootie catcher based algorithm to reveal the alternate life of a childhood imaginary friend because she may have been closer than she though to bringing her to life in the first place. Her next movie though is about the first human being BBQing and eating his own ribs to transform into EVE after an evening of hallucinogenic indigestion. Her work has shown at Vox Populi, Practice Gallery, Fringe Arts Theater, ICA Philly, Little Berlin, Killjoys Kastle, Johnny Brenda’s, Ice Box... places like that. She was a founding member of New Boone Artist Collective & Gallery. Frances is into democratizing the process of myth making, adding more trans content to the world and transforming unwieldy and difficult experiences into folklore because it feels good to turn a painful memory into a fairytale.
Awarded Grants
2020
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Frances is creating Give My Best to your kind!, a feature length animation about the self-declared first human being BBQing and eating his own ribs to transform overnight into Eve. Using biography and Old Testament magic logic, the story mythologizes Frances’ endocrinal MTF transition and reclaims religion and myth, which are often weaponized against trans and gender nonconforming folx. The film will be scored by Frances and voice acted by local performers and artists, employing and collaborating with trans and gender nonconforming folks. The film will have an online premiere.
