‘Tops’ was created from the desire to display transmasculine vulnerability. My experience with top surgery, with its many stages of tenderness, holds the urgency, trauma, and grief it took to become myself.

(Lindsay Perryman)

CLAMP is proud to present Tops, the first US solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Lindsay Perryman. Born and raised in New York, Perryman’s work explores the existence, visibility, and nuances of transgender identities. Perryman utilizes their practice to challenge and rewrite misconceptions about the spectrum of identity. They rely on a cultivated visual awareness to reinterpret and redefine queerness.

Perryman’s 2024 film, Tops, is a visual mediation on the often-overlooked experiences of Black transmasculinity. Shooting photographs before, during, and after the production, the images were gathered into a cohesive body of work and a monograph of the same title (Palm Studios). Through moving and still images, Perryman employs the experience of top surgery as a tool to explore matters of community and belonging, as well as forging one’s place within a wider world.

Perryman romanticizes the healing process after top surgery to highlight the importance of community when grappling with trauma, pain, and eventual recovery. Perryman explains, “The recurring presence of scarring holds the weight of not just physical change, but emotional and communal healing. Many of those featured in Tops refer to the commitment of their caregivers, devoting time to their well-being, granting them the access to a greater depth of resilience many hadn’t accessed before.”

Through literal self portraits and self portraits implied through the depiction of others, Perryman elucidates the importance of trans people seeing themselves in a tangible way, whether it be in print, in an artwork on the wall, a film on a screen, or looking back at them from a mirror. They state, “[A] lot of the community are excited about the opportunity to be photographed and be seen.”