“Transness will save you:” A conversation about trans salvation and grief with artist A Beaumont

Tend to your grief, by A Beaumont. Image courtesy of the artist. 

BY EMMA CIESLIK January 16, 2026

A Beaumont (they/them) is a white canadian settler, transsexual, intersex, crip punk artist. They are a self-taught mixed media and multi-disciplinary artist, community organizer and art therapy student. Their art explores disability and crip identity as someone with chronic pain, AuDHD, CPTSD, and high anxiety who sometimes uses a mobility device. They are currently working on their master’s thesis exploring art, accessibility, and anti-capitalism, specifically the power of art as a slow practice that rejects ableist ideals of productivity. 

As we start 2026, I sat down with Beaumont to learn more about their art as an anti-fascist practice and a form of mutual aid, as well as a conduit to hold and release trans grief--the grief of living in a world where anti-trans legislation and violence makes it difficult for us to live and the grief that our trans ancestors died holding. Beaumont also explores how after receiving a gender affirming surgery, their artistic practice of using religious imagery, iconography, and symbologies to imagine transness as divine shifted. 

In the aftermath, they not only reclaimed this imagery to reconcile with past religious trauma but also to visualize transness as a salvation in of itself, a spiritual practice that is built on faith in one another and community. 

Emma Cieslik: As a community organizer, your activism explores and facilitates mutual aid in the fight against fascism. How is art part of this rebellion? I think especially of the zines that you have been part of creating, including “Survival Tips from Queer Elders” that builds on the long history of trans zines sharing information and facilitating community survival, and zines created by and for disabled artists and activists, like the COVID Cautious Queers Zine.

A Beaumont: There’s so much to say here. I guess I want to focus on mutual aid as fighting fascism and how art is a part of that. I think mutual aid can be so many different things. Of course, the financial aspect of mutual aid is important, especially if you have access to wealth, distributing that is important, but I think also art is a part of mutual aid. 

There’s a couple things. I think art as mutual aid can be done in various ways, including fundraising and that financial aspect that I mentioned, but also art as trading with other people for skills or services or food and also making art alone or with other people. I think the act of making art is often slow and intentional--that in of itself is an act of resistance against capitalism, against fascism, by reclaiming time and space and what we do with our bodies. I think there’s a couple of levels. The act of making art is “simple,” and then the message in the art so whether that be explicit in the words that you choose in the art or images or symbols, and then what you do with art itself. 

Cieslik: How can art and community activism be part of queer grieving, and what is queer grieving? In your piece for Salty, you recognize growing attention on queer grief while also highlighting the need to recognize and discuss trans grief during the current crisis of anti-trans legislation and violence. How is trans grief created, protected, and empowered through the art that you and others create?

Beaumont: This is a beautiful question. I think my journey with queer grief has been really interesting. I think that grief is just an inherent part of being queer and trans in the world that we live in, and it took me a long time to identify that within myself because it can feel all encompassing but it’s also ongoing and cumulative. The thing that cracked open grief for me was losing a dear friend and community member who died a couple of years ago and then my chosen grandmother died in 2024. I’ve had to make more intentional space for grief because of those big losses and because of how everything is escalating in the world politically, economically, in resistance. 

I am having to make intentional time and space for it, and a lot of times words fail me so all I can do is make something. It’s become a really intentional part of my practice, particularly because moving my body is helpful for me but as a fat and disabled person, I don’t like or care about exercise and so it’s like, ‘what does movement look like?’ and sometimes for me, that’s making art. I think about connecting with my body, moving my body, and making art as a way to make space for my grief and also sometimes it’s not even my grief. 

I think there is so much collective trans and queer grief that needs to be held and that shouldn’t be all on one person and sometimes art feels like the only way to capture that, even if it’s not making art with a specific message or theme about grief or images about grief, just like moving through those feelings, through those thoughts, while you’re making art if it’s something totally not related, that has been really important to me. 

Cieslik: And how does crip grief tie into this? I loved your recent piece reflecting on the life and death of disabled activist Alice Wong that features your hands holding flowers (a motif from the book cover) and words from the introduction of her book Disability Intimacy. How can queer grief, trans grief, crip grief be an offering (and a blessing) to our ancestors and to us? I think of your pieces featuring reflections on grief written inside of an upside down pink triangle after the Club Q shooting. 

Beaumont: Again, a lovely question! The piece about ancestors is big and something that I’ve really been exploring in recent years. I have a complicated relationship with my ancestry as a white settler, and in the past, I have avoided that or not felt comfortable wanting to confront my white supremacy and discomfort in those ways. I’ve been in a lot of beautiful spaces, particularly in the master’s program that I’m in, with racialized folks and folks with different experiences where we explore the concept of ancestry as it relates to in this program, in particular, practicing art therapy. 

I’ve really been trying to tap into a broader concept of ancestors, like communal ancestors, not necessarily in your family of origin or your biological family because I think I really don’t feel connected to that, but when I think about ancestors in a broader context, that is something that I can hold. When I think about queer, trans, and crip grief, honoring ancestors and myself and the folks in my life and the folks in community, going back to the first question about honoring that part of queer, trans, and disabled experience that holds so much grief and making space for it in ways that ancestors maybe didn’t or weren’t able to or it maybe looked different. 

If I think about folks who were organizing around AIDS and Stonewall and in my own local context, “Survival Tips from Queer Elders” that you mentioned, talking to queer elders in my community, resistance was very much front-line and in the streets. Honoring my grief, our grief, through art and through protest in various ways is important, and it is continuing a legacy that we owe to our ancestors, to continue the work that they started, even if it looks different and even if sometimes it feels like nothing has changed. The reason that I can exist is because of my queer, trans, and disabled ancestors, so I try to remember that and hold that close to me in what I do. 

May trans angels guide you, by A Beaumont. Image courtesy of the artist. 

Cieslik: Your art also explores queer divinity, and how reclaiming and visualizing transness as holy and divine is itself an act of rebellion and revolution against religious hegemony and bigotry. How can art that explores queer religion, especially your recent three collages featuring lyrics from Florence and the Machine’s new album, and sees transness as inherently divine challenge and transcend the Christian nationalism at the heart of modern anti-trans legislation?
Beaumont: I guess I have to start from my own perspective on queer divinity and queer religion. I was raised by atheist parents but Baptist Christian grandparents and grew up in the church until I was a young teenager, until I realized I was queer and then I was like, ‘what am I doing here?’ Not to say that that is everyone’s experience but that was mine. But when I came out as queer and trans to my biological family, there was the idea, the message, that those things are wrong in the eyes of God and it’s a sin and all of that. 

When I stopped practicing Christianity, I needed a lot of space from it but in recent years have really started to go back to this symbology, the iconography, as something to reclaim because I just think it’s so glamorous and campy and beautiful. I love it visually. I love looking at it. I love the colors. It’s so over the top I feel like. 

I think I needed and still need to challenge Christian nationalism in my family and what Christianity means in the context of again my ancestry, my experience as a white settler on stolen land and in a larger context, I live in a pretty conservative province and so I think whenever I make art with Christian iconography, I just think I want to make something that would make my grandmother really angry. 

For me, it is a very personal resistance but it of course does challenge things on a larger level. It is a privilege to put that art out into the world, especially in this current climate that spirituality and religion that’s rooted in queerness and transness and disability is something that we can create, whatever that means to us and that is what is going to get us through and that is what is going to burn everything down. It’s not Christianity that is going to save us. 

One of three collages featuring lyrics from Florence and the Machine’s new album by A. Beaumont. Image courtesy of the artist. 

Cieslik: What is the power in reclaiming religious imagery, iconography, and language an anti-fascist practice, and one that opposes the lie that Christian nationalism has a monopoly on religion and spirituality? I think especially of your piece “God is trans femme” and “disabled trans angels protect us.”

Beaumont: I got gender affirming surgery almost a year ago and that quite literally broke me open in terms of my spirituality in a way that I never could have anticipated and didn’t really understand. It felt huge. It felt life-changing but I was like, ‘this is something. This is significant.’ Talking to chosen family and therapists and folks that are spiritual, they were like, ‘you’re having a spiritual awakening.’ 

I’ve really made space for my grief because of the loss of two loved ones and that has also channeled spirituality for me, and in particular, I was working with a death doula named Jamie Thrower who’s based in Oregon. She helped me prepare for my chosen grandmother’s death. I guess I bring that up to talk about the ways that queer folks are creating new practices and new ways of honoring life and death. I think in a time where we are so aware of the death in terms of anti-trans violence but also ongoing global genocides that we need to make space for rituals and practices that honor ourselves and the loved ones that we lose. 

That is also connected to art. I made so much art when I was recovering from my gender affirming surgery last year. I think spirituality is like a belief system and a practice and a ritual and also an experience can be similar to grief in expressing it through art. When you don’t have the words or understand it. That was really how I was feeling: ‘I’ve just got to make art about it until it makes sense or maybe it won’t make sense but I’m going to make art about it.’

It can be so powerful. I’ve made really beautiful connections with folks like beyond borders internationally who really resonate with my art that includes religious imagery and queer and trans messages. That’s such a privilege and an honor. I don’t make art for that intention. I think making art to share with the community and connect with others is the point, but I don’t specifically make things like, ‘oh, this is going to connect with a certain kind of person.’ I’m always really surprised, and I think that’s where the power comes from. The way that it connects us and being open to that curiosity and surprise I think is really special. 

One of three collages featuring lyrics from Florence and the Machine’s new album by A. Beaumont. Image courtesy of the artist. 

Cieslik: You mention this gender affirming surgery being a spiritual awakening for you. Would you mind explaining more about that and how it impacted your art? 

Beaumont: I’ll get specific. I had a hysterectomy, and there was a lot connected to that, but there were a few things that tied into spirituality for me. One of them was that I felt very connected to my chosen grandmother who had died when I had this surgery because I had supported her through surgery before. In a weird way, I’m sober but I was put on narcotic pain killers, and I had a really bad trip. I really thought I was going to die, and I really was thinking about my chosen grandmother and so there was the very existential thinking about death, spirituality component. 

I also felt like the surgery had given me a key or some way to unlock who I am, and I don’t even really fully comprehend it yet. After surgery, I’ve changed my name. I cut most of my hair off. I have been thinking about and exploring transness in a new way. Before the surgery, I would typically call myself trans, but now, I really identify with the label and identity of transsexual and that does feel spiritual to me. I can’t really put it into words. 

It’s very much a felt sensation that I have really explored through art, so what I did in terms of art, in my hysterectomy recovery, I had these little pocket journals that I wrote in and did collage in. I was writing a lot about life and death and change and transformation and my body. Containing it in these little journals felt important in some way instead of in my typical art practice, I don’t use a journal. I just use scraps and stuff. So it felt really important to make space for that exploration in a specific way. 

Trans is Salvation, by A Beaumont. Image courtesy of the artist. 

Cieslik: One of my favorite works you created features the words “Trans is Salvation” against a background of angels, clouds, and yellow stained glass. In the caption you write that “Trans is my religion.” How is your trans identity part of your spirituality and vice versa? And how does art capture the divinity of transness and spiritual ecstacy of gender affirming care?

Beaumont: At that time [when I made this print in 2022], I was in the early stages of exploring religious imagery and trans divinity in my artwork and just in general thinking about that as a concept. What I really kind of held onto at that time was that I’m not religious and I’m not spiritual, but if I believed in anything, it would be in trans people, like the power of being trans and the authenticity, the beauty, of being trans as godliness. 

I see this in a way where if I were to compare it to my Christian upbringing and these things that I’m directly making art against, I see transness, trans people and trans identity as similar to how Christians see Jesus. Not in a sense--well, I was going to contradict myself. I was going to say not in the way that transness will save you, but yeah, it does and it will. 

Thinking about those pieces, it being about four years ago and the ways it has shifted for me since my gender affirming surgery. I think as trans people, we have a very intimate relationship with life and death and that’s really connected to spirituality in terms of life cycle and rebirth and transformation. They’re so intertwined that they’re kind of the same thing. I think it’s really beautiful, and as I said, it’s something that I’ve only really been exploring for about a year, and I don’t even have a full picture of what that means to me, but I do think transness and spirituality, whether you see them as separate things or the same thing, that is the thing that will keep us alive and fighting and resisting and also will honor us in our death in a way that cis-het Christians will not honor us. 

There is a resistance in trans death as well in a way that is really profound. It’s all connected to everything we’ve already talked about, like the grief, the art, all of it is so connected. I’m excited to see how this unfolds for me. I think there’s a lot to be said about the power of art and spirituality to connect trans people in particular but trans, queer, and disabled people in a way that people who don’t hold those identities will never understand, and it’s not for them anyways.