leia li fifer

they/them

troublemaker

aka liam

I am a rhode island-based, multidisciplinary artist creating deeply spiritual and personal sculptural, experimental, and multi-media work to try and make sense of it all. through the encouragement and teachings of the community inside and outside of the academic arts, I have a life as a self-employed tattooer, sculptor, speaker, writer, and participant in various underground venues and pop-up shows.

being trans and disabled- an individual with a spinal cord and brain malformation, neurological disease, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, and severe ehler’s danlos syndrome- I often feel trapped inside my body by pain and physical decay. my body seems to work against me, and yet I push forward. having experienced severe depression in my life as well, my connection to my time on this earth and in this body feels limited. the pain comes out as a figure, an entity, a portal to somewhere, anywhere; a pile of guts, a bone, a creature, an angel, making itself known in the work no matter what medium, like a voice that cries out louder than I can stand- something I couldn’t silence even if I tried.

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“in dealing with an illness that makes me feel like my mind and body are beyond my control, my decisions to tattoo myself are cementing me in a reality I don’t often have a full, firm grip on… I have not considered my body a part of me or a mind a part of my body in a long time. tattooing has taken me into a place where I feel like I can accept the uncontrollable with more grace. the significance of this experience and those who experience it as well in relation to tattooing, whether it be with gender, chronic pain, trauma, is not lost on me. I am so humbled by the practice. It is especially intimate and beautiful based on the nature of the [tattoo] design when people come to me, saying these images speak to them, and they want them to become a part of their body; my imagery is compulsive to my hand, unique only to my brain, a cathartic release of something that seeps into every aspect of my life. it is a reflection of what goes on inside of me, and can’t be suppressed by the very nature of its aggressiveness, and peculiarity… it feels humbling to have someone say, ‘i can understand your language, and i want to speak it too.’”