Spooky Action As Resistance: Cara Tierney’s Phantomtits is sensitivity training...with ghosts!
Credit: Phantomtits
Phantomtits began as an eBay password.
In 2013, Cara Tierney had taken up online shopping while recovering from top surgery, and needed a password to set up their eBay account. Racking their brain for something unique and memorable, the words ‘phantom tits’ drifted into their mind and lingered expectantly. A variant of phantom limb syndrome, the phrase was an accurate description of Tierney’s post-surgery sensations as they adjusted to the new ways their body existed in space. It also sounded to them like a superhero name – “Phantomtits!” they announced grandly during our Zoom interview, like an awed citizen pointing up at Superman – which brought to their mind images of a literal social justice warrior, clad in colourful spandex, charging across panels of a comic book page. It was an exciting concept, though as an artist working primarily with performance, photography, and installation, graphic novels were unfamiliar territory for Tierney. The dream of a comic book remained a dream, and ‘phantom tits’ remained the humble guardian of their eBay account.
That is, until a fateful meeting with multidisciplinary artist Pascale Arpin in 2016 roused the dormant project idea. Arpin, whose hand-painted signs can be found throughout the city, was eager to lend her illustration skills to Tierney’s story. The two joined forces, and in the winter of 2020, the first issue of Phantomtits was released.
Credit: @phantomtits
In the tradition of classic superhero narratives, this inaugural volume functions as an origin story of sorts. It recounts Tierney’s autobiographical journey through medical institutions in pursuit of top surgery, and ends with a supernatural twist (the latter of which is fictionalized, as far as we know). The novel lays bare the medical system’s failings when caring for trans patients, and the distinct inequalities in how different bodies are treated. (Tierney emphasizes that they still benefited from privileges that allowed for relatively smooth passage through the system compared to many trans people.) An initial consultation regarding surgery is, in comic-book-Cara’s words, “disappointing” and “pathologizing,” and presents a maze of bureaucratic and financial obstacles rather than compassionate care. In contrast, when Tierney tests positive for a cancer gene, they are quickly and easily whisked towards a preventative double mastectomy, free of charge. Arpin’s deft linework captures the nuances in the interactions with doctors and Tierney’s friend Nada, with a grounded playfulness that lends itself well to the complex tone of the book.
Credit: Phantomtits
In early iterations, Tierney had imagined the graphic novel as an educational tool complete with footnotes, definitions of terms, and a glossary, for potential use as required reading in classrooms. As the project continued, these notes began to feel unnecessary: “The reality is, we’re all hyper-networked right now,” Tierney explains over Zoom, and my eyes flit compulsively to the smartphone lying steadfast at my side. “So if there is a word that I don’t understand, the first thing I do is pull out my phone and look it up. We realized that we don’t have to be so transparent. We can leave some things veiled, and maybe that will actually encourage curiosity, because curiosity is important.” They add that humans are inherently curious creatures, and that desire should be nurtured.
Even without footnotes, there is much to be learned by listening to individual experiences. Tierney’s attitude towards their breasts complicates prevalent beliefs about trans peoples’ relationships with their bodies, and the reasoning behind pursuing certain surgeries. “It was a way to challenge the idea that trans people hate their bodies, which is the common tag phrase that has accompanied trans health forever. You have to express some kind of distaste for your body. I guess I felt more ambivalent than I felt distaste towards my body.” Both in Phantomtits and real life, Tierney chose to have their breasts cremated. Normally a practice for grieving, calling for the solemnity that was readily supplied by those at the funeral home, the cremation was more of a respectful tribute. As they explain to their friend Nada: “We have had great times together. Made lots of art, pushed boundaries…but our work here is done! And I’m trying to coordinate one last send-off.” Phantomtits expands the narrow mainstream narratives around trans identities, revealing these nuances and making them accessible through art.
For Tierney, art itself can be an effective instructor by encouraging dialogue and fostering an empathetic environment. “The art allows a different type of conversation to take place,” they say. “It suddenly opens up the floor in a very different way. People engage differently. They feel like they have a personal stake in the conversation as opposed to a contractual stake, because the artwork is more propositional and wide open.” When hosting workshops for groups and institutions wanting to create more accessible workspaces, Tierney uses their own artwork to address issues of gender. Rather than presenting a dull slideshow with definitions to memorize, they opt to “[show] them slides of me in my prom dress, doing something really weird in a basement in Quebec as a performance art piece.” More recently Phantomtits has been added to their tool belt, which serves to introduce the subject matter, their lived experience, and cartoon ghosts that effectively “[break] any kind of stale monotony.” (In other words, this ain’t your social workers’ sensitivity training.) Attendees are guided through the complex world of gender and sexuality by visual representations of Tierney’s personal experience, and respond in kind by making sense of the information through their own personal experience. In engaging more intimately, they learn to empathize rather than simply tolerate. Moreover, they begin to understand themselves as active participants in the intricacies of gender rather than distant, objective observers. “Ultimately, the way I approach the subject material is that it’s not about your community and the trans community, but actually these issues affect all of us. They just affect us in different ways, and we should be accountable to them in different ways.” More often than not, these short workshops transform into group therapy sessions where people who were never given the language or opportunity to explore their gender are finally given both, and those who may have never given their gender a second thought are encouraged to do so. They enter the sessions expecting to learn about something outside of themselves and leave with a deeper understanding of their internal selves.
Tierney speculates that our ability to empathize through art can be attributed to our intrinsic draw to the visual: “We live in an ocular-centric world, where we place a lot of emphasis and a lot of value on the visual. As a result, I think we just become conditioned to visual cues and visual signaling in certain ways.” Not only does Tierney think that we are highly receptive to these signals, but that we look to them to help form our identities: “We create our identities collectively. We’ve been sold these false notions of Western individualism, but actually, we are who we are because of everyone and everything around us.” In other words, visual experiences become part of our personal narrative, consciously or unconsciously, and each new one we encounter has the possibility of being assimilated into that narrative.
For many marginalized subjects who aren’t regularly or fairly represented in mainstream visual culture, art can be an oasis to peer into and find their reflection. Art, for Tierney, supplied “signposts of queerness and transness” that helped them develop an understanding of their desires for themselves and how they navigate through the world. “For queer and trans subjects, the world has been created in such a way that there aren’t many instances of those moments when mirroring can happen. In those moments when the artwork does mirror the fabulousness of queerness right back at you, you’re like, ‘oh, that’s what that feeling was. Okay, that completely reorganizes everything that I thought about myself. Now I’m going to go back into my bedroom and craft myself into something fabulous and reveal myself to the world again’.”
Tierney’s work aims, in part, to help provide that mirroring to trans and queer youth, passing along the signposts that once guided them. When developing a project, they try to imagine the ideal encounter someone would have with their work – a goal they encourage their students at uOttawa to strive for, as well. The lighted aluminum ‘they’ sign at the Ottawa Art Gallery’s Daly Street entrance, installed by Tierney in 2019, is a bold declaration for anyone who sees it. For Tierney, they specifically imagined the sign being observed by a youth accompanied by a parent who is dismissive or unsupportive of their use of they/them pronouns. Their dream scenario is “for that youth to stand next to their parent and be fully affirmed by that sign, despite the parent maybe not being quite there yet with them.”
Credit: Cara Tierney
Audience engagement is always something Tierney bears in mind when releasing artwork into the wild, with an understanding that it will have some sort of effect, regardless of intent: “I’m putting this thing into the world that I am responsible for, and it’s going to have an impact. It’s going to do things.” Not always good things, mind you – they cite the appropriation of Pepe the Frog by white supremacists as an example of unintended consequences. Art-making becomes a balancing act between the ego-driven desire to scream into the void, and understanding that the void can hear you and may indeed scream back. “I do see a big moral responsibility in being an artist,” Tierney says, recommending that one should anticipate possible conversations that could be generated by the artwork, and at least try to steer those conversations in a good direction. If you’re going to get into a screaming match with the void, it may as well be productive.
Currently, Phantomtits is on display in uOttawa’s Faculty of Medicine building. As the artist-in-residence since 2019, Tierney printed out the individual pages and exhibited them in a large empty cork board that serves as an ad hoc art gallery. Medical students walking to and from class may choose to pause and contemplate the work. The 30 pages of illustrated conversations, dream sequences, and ghostly breasts may give them insight into experiences that aren’t taught in their classrooms, and perhaps help them develop empathy for future patients of theirs.
Credit: Phantomtits
If you want to enjoy the pages for yourself, printed issues are available for purchase at www.phantomtits.com, as well as a free PDF that can be read online. Arpin and Tierney aim to release the second installment of the Phantomtits trilogy in the winter of 2021, with updates posted on their Instagram of the same name. Volume two will reveal the powers of the titular ghosts, feature more of Nada, and include some cameos of familiar faces.