[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Lyles_And_King_5079.jpg?w=1000″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe first thing I see upon enteringRen Light Pan\u2019s tiny New York studio is a large canvas with a monochrome image of Sleeping Hermaphroditus<\/em>. It\u2019s the one that\u2019s in the Louvre: a life-size marble Roman copy of an ancient Greek bronze from the 2nd century C.E. Pan shows me a series of smaller images on canvas, variations on this classical figure by other artists. But Pan\u2019s big one is most arresting, in part because it\u2019s from a photograph in which we see the legs of spectators behind the reclining marble figure.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s not surprising that a transgender artist would choose this subject, or that a transgender writer would immediately recognize it. Hermaphroditus is a supposedly mythical figure. He was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, so hot he turned the head of Salmacis. She was a rather wayward naiad who tried to force herself on the boy. The gods granted her prayer to unite them forever\u2014and they became Hermaphroditus.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn Western visual culture, Hermaphroditus is an ancestor of transgender porn. Seen from behind, the reclining figure is all graceful shoulder and delicious ass; seen from the other side\u2014dick and a hint of breast. Pan\u2019s versions dramatize the dilemma of the trans artist (and the trans writer, too): that we\u2019re never not seen through the cis gaze, through which we\u2019re some mythical thing. We\u2019re the anomaly that gives the cis the comfortable feeling of being normal. To misquote Dorothy Parker: Being cis is not normal, it\u2019s just common. Or, as Pan says: \u201cWe\u2019ve been around forever, but we\u2019re always a spectacle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tPan\u2019s images are made with a kind of duotone method of her own invention. She mixes ink and water on a flat surface\u2014usually the floor of the studio. Over that is suspended a primed canvas. On top of that, she lays a transparent film bearing the image ordered up from the copy shop across the street. Overhead are the kind of heat lamps you can get from a hardware store. With all the parts in place, the image forms over an hour or two as the heat evaporates the mix of ink and water.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tPan came up with this method\u2014a way of \u201ccreating a situation where I\u2019m not entirely in control\u201d\u2014to circumvent her perfectionist tendencies. What she surrenders in terms of control, she gains in autonomy. The materials are easily sourced, low-tech, and don\u2019t require collaborators. \u201cThe ink is so cheap,\u201d she says. (\u201cBut let\u2019s not tell the collectors that,\u201d I say.)<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s a lot of accumulated knowledge about the process that goes into making Pan\u2019s striking images. The image transfer is sensitive to temperature and humidity, but she has learned from experience how long the exposure is likely to take. The results are beautiful, in part because, in a world where we see endless images, Pan\u2019s homebrew method gives them a unique appearance.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tPan shows me some works in other series, based on other images, including one of her own body. Making these involved lying in the pose for over an hour while the image formed. That was before she transitioned. Since then she has abandoned the masochistic durational performance side of the image-making process. Which is a good thing, I tell her. Both of us are done with the pain our bodies used to cause us. Now we\u2019re making beautiful things with our beautiful flesh. Even if, like Hermaphroditus, we have to put up with being a spectacle, it\u2019s a living.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-in-america\/columns\/ren-light-pan-trans-artist-photo-painting-lyles-king-1234787594\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Lyles_And_King_5079.jpg?w=1000″] The first thing I see upon enteringRen Light Pan\u2019s tiny New York studio is a large canvas with a monochrome image of Sleeping Hermaphroditus. It\u2019s the one that\u2019s in the Louvre: a life-size marble Roman copy of an ancient Greek bronze from the 2nd century C.E. Pan shows me a series of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1959327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1959327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1959327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1959327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1959327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}