Andy Šlemenda (they/them) is a queer, transgender artist from rural Appalachia. They roleplay with concepts of transformation and transcendence embedded in corporeality and spirituality. Their artworks challenge perceptions that the unknown or unusual, historically deemed the queer, is evil. Šlemenda rehabilitates these queer-coded representations through site-specific events and sculptures.

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Šlemenda draws from their origins in Northwestern Pennsylvania, a region known for its agriculutural workingclass, paranormal sightings, and the Amish and Quaker communities. Coming out there and expressing themselves as trans was a difficult but powerful experience. 

This process of self-actualization grew into a passion for occult practices. Šlemenda found that the esoteric encapsulated a transcendent approach to selfhood encoded in a complex, abstract visual language. Their creative works often emerge from these otherworldly systems as a means of channeling the deepest apparitions of the self. 

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Šlemenda’s artworks have been exhibited throughout the United States, France, Germany, Turkey and Canada. They received their MFA from New York University Steinhardt and were a Sorbonne-Panthéon Université 1 postgraduate fellow. They have instructed courses at Carnegie Mellon University and NYU. Their work has been included in Viola Kolarov’s On Reading Walter Benjamin as Pure Medium, in conversation with Katherine Sperber in Strange Fire Collective and with Nüans Nüans for Revolver Publishing.

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