JASON WYMAN IS QUEERLY COMPLEX.
photo by Robbie Sweeny from "Confessing Desire" presented at This Is What I Want, curated by crystal am nelson & Tessa Wills
I am Jason Michael Wyman (E / he / they).
I was born upon the Land of 10,000 Lakes on what I am coming to know as Turtle Island, who has settled on Yelamu, which is also called San Francisco. My name means healer, or so I've been told since a young child. I did not believe it until my father, Michael (Mike) James Wyman, and I mended our selves and one another as my dad died of mantle cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma across a screen and a country over all of 2020.
What I am coming to understand as the significance of my name is that healer does not mean healed or (even) healing. Rather, it is a positionality within the cosmos that allows one's self to change and be changed by all that unfolds. It is to be curious and listen, and then create.
I, too, am white. I, too, am male (presenting). I, too, am queer. I, too, am anti-binary. I, too, am an artist. I am so many things named and unnamed. But who I be is a gatherer of relations and a dreamer of possibilities amidst the chaos of creation and death and rebirth.
My work has shown in homes, in public transit plazas, in secret gardens, in parks and along water's edge, on streets and alleys, and in institutions, whose names do not matter.
I am proud to be a Co-Founder of the Immigrant Artist Network with Rupy C. Tut and a collective of 23 immigrant artists, a Co-Founder of Tree of Change with Crystal Mason, an Arts Consultant with AllThrive Education, and a Creator of Chaos Poetry.
QUEERLY COMPLEX
IS JASON WYMAN.
I am Queerly Complex (no pronouns).
Queerly Complex began as a blog in 2007 as a way for me to self publish my words, photos, and art. Queerly Complex was an assorted collection of deeply personal essays about The Space Between, Bukowski-esque rides through a parallel San Francisco connected by The Red Dot, queer comics panels called Chuck & Charles, cell phone photos of the Bay Area (before Instagram), and diagrams and doodles mapping my chaotic mind. I loved what appeared to be its randomness, and I knew somehow it was all connected. Queerly Complex just needed some time to stew, percolate, ferment, and foment.
I came to understand Queerly Complex as "loving fearlessly, transforming radically, and compassionately mirroring," over the course of publishing my blog. This definition aided me in seeing connections and intersections between what at times seemed so disparate and divergent. From my surrealist, drug-fueled romps through the queer underground to examining my "Piss Trigger" to splitting my be-ing into the nerdy Charles and the gothic Chuck to mind maps exploring how we transmit and transmute knowledge, I was expressing how I understand and make meaning of this great big cosmos.
Queerly Complex has evolved from its roots as a blog into a way of life and the name of my art practice. I now define it as, "the art of relating to one's self, each other, and the Cosmic Mysteries." And it includes an entire cosmology (see: Queerly Complex Cosmos) of guiding values, situational durational performances, grounding dreams, iterative design models, social practice art interventions, creative coaching services, large-scale collaborations for organizational culture tending, illustrations and diagrams and maps of relational dynamics, and so much more. Simply, I am Queerly Complex.
Queerly Complex will continue to evolve, morph, and adapt as I change, grow, Unforget and Unflatten (tune into Instagram for more on this!)
And you can follow its evolution by signing up for my newsletter below.