Sadé Mica

Do you wear your heart on your shirt sleeve?

We are always making decisions about our bodies: what we eat, what we do, and what we wear. Grace in the Garms explores how we continue to connect with our physical form. Hung on a classic Australian hills hoist are three binders – or compression undergarments typically worn to flatten or reduce the appearance of chest tissue. Some individuals feel more comfortable wearing binders. Others believe that the comfort of fitting in comes with the price of bodily freedoms.

Sadé has reimagined binders as pieces of outwear; by wearing binders so proudly we can challenge the erasure of transness, all while neutralizing the garment. Transness should not have rules, and neither should binders.

Is it possible for clothing to free our bodies?

Sadé Mica’s (they/them) current practice explores their experiences navigating the world as a fat, queer, black person and the nuances that brings in fleshing out an identity that is often met with contempt and confusion. They use photography, textiles, print and film alongside other mediums to document their body, emotions, ever-in-flux gender presentation and the facets of their identity they feel most pressing in regards to their gaze and worldview.

GRACE IN THE GARMS was commissioned by Science Gallery London, King’s College London, as part of GENDERS: Shaping and Breaking the Binary.