Marius Keo

Biography

Marius Keo Marjolin is a queer mixed Khmerican printmaker, illustrator and comic artist currently based in New England. In 2021, they graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking. They are a member of Queer.Archive.Work/Binch Press, a printmaking and community organizing collective based in Providence, RI.

Artist Statement

I’ve been thinking recently about my body in transition. I have been on testosterone for the past eight years and have seen my body shift to become a prickly thing. My skin is more coarse, more dry and covered in dark stubble that clogs the bathroom sink. My hair, once pin straight, has become more wavy and unruly. The first few months of hormone replacement therapy brought along these rapid changes, not just physical, but mental, that coincided with my grueling first semester of art school. After having grown up with frequent panic attacks, starting testosterone made it physically difficult to cry, like the tears couldn’t push past the wall of my eyelids. Eventually, the changes leveled out to the point of being imperceptible. Taking my weekly shot became more of a chore, almost an obligation to my younger self to maintain the changes that they had fought so hard for.

My prescription has become harder for me to refill, the vials of testosterone perpetually on back order at the pharmacy. I started missing my shot more and more. In the past six months, I started getting my period again after not having to buy pads since my sophomore year of college. My period used to be my biggest source of body dysphoria when I was younger. Even if taking my shot felt like a nuisance, it felt worthwhile if anything just to stop my period. But even after recommitting to taking my shot every week, it hasn’t stopped.

I thought ever having to experience my period again would be some great tragedy, after all the emotional turmoil it used to cause me, and yet it’s been surprisingly anti-climactic. It’s to the point that I’ve considered stopping testosterone entirely, despite having thought for a long time that I would be taking this medication for the rest of my life. If I stop, many of the changes, like my voice and my facial hair, will stay the same. Over time, my body might become softer, the fat redistributing back into my hips and my face. And it might become easier for me to cry, but I will never look like my teenage self again. My recent self portraits and comic work are documents of my body in progress. The tattoos I’ve collected since I was 18, at first out of a desire to “look older” that later became an expression of bodily autonomy. My top surgery scars like shooting stars along my chest. My hair, bleached and dyed once upon a time but long since grown out.

I see myself as part of a network of connections, where the lines between friend, ex, lover, family and comrade often blur together or bend into shapes not easily understood by cis-heteronormative society. Comics are one way I’ve attempted to describe these shapes through word and image. My comic, Double Incised, is largely based on my personal experience with medical transition and falling in and out of love. The story follows Gem, a non-binary person in their twenties recovering from top surgery with the help of their girlfriend, Sloane, a transwoman at the start of her transition. The comic follows their relationship and eventual breakup coinciding with Gem’s recovery, flashing between past and present in order to explore themes of care, co-dependency, how trauma manifests in the body, and heartbreak. As the two come into their own trans identities and gradually become estranged from one another, Gem and Sloane are forced to contemplate questions like how to grieve the lives, bodies and love they once had while choosing to inhabit their true selves.

Website: keomarjolin.net

Instagram: @tofu.twink