From Mikela Jay’s interview with Lissa Rivera discussing her series “Beautiful Boy”:
“Non-Binary” has become the latest descriptor for a growing number of those who’s personal relationship to their own gender and sexual expression blows the doors off the musty old chamber that for centuries housed the holy ‘male’ and ‘female’ only binary. In 2016, the LGBTQQI (etc) acronym for everything not cis-white-male is expanding, inclusively embracing alternative fractals of humankind. ‘Non-Binary’ takes center stage in Never Apart’s Gallery spaces, until January 2017.
Lissa Rivera’s photographs explore the parameters of a new kind of relationship. Creating a world they desired to live in, Rivera and her partner have taken their private reality making it public through the childlike fun of dressing up, creating images which transcend boundaries of class and gender. “I feel like not many women have stood in my shoes, and it is incredibly enlightening. ‘Beautiful Boy’ allows us to play-act images, creating identities as fluid as our desires.” For Rivera, non-binary means a certain freedom not constrained to any rules when it comes to gender.