hugo oguh

Description

"Delicacies" is part of the series "Refusion", and portrays a Black trans person with angelic wings surrounded by birds, evoking softness, care, and a powerful contradiction to the social marginalization of such bodies. The work competes with classical angelic representations, often coded within whiteness and idealized masculinity or femininity, to reaffirm that angelic presences, as described in sacred texts, are neither gendered nor corporeal. Here, delicacy is political. Centering a dissident body in a celestial, serene, and almost sacred scene acts as both a symbolic correction and a poetic provocation. The birds around them are not just part of the composition — they are witnesses, companions, guardians.

Process

"Delicacies" emerges from the desire to reimagine the sacred with bodies that have been historically silenced. It's a gesture of speculative repair, of tenderness as resistance. The series "Refusion" seeks to bring dissident narratives into visual dialogues that span centuries, challenging colonial and binary aesthetics. Creating Delicadezas was also an act of reclaiming softness — particularly for Black trans bodies, so often denied vulnerability. I was inspired by questions like: What if history had remembered us differently? What if we had always been there — winged, watched, and radiant?

Tools

The process began with historical research: browsing public domain image archives and identifying works where absence echoed loudest. For "Delicacies" , I chose Hanging Birds by Magnus von Wright (1865) and Angel Mikael after winning the dragon by Torsten Wasastjerna (1906). I studied these compositions and iconographies, comparing forms and meanings to understand how to subvert or expand them. Only after this historical and conceptual mapping, I crafted prompts for the AI image generator, carefully guiding the visual fusion between past and present. AI was not used blindly — it served as a speculative bridge. After generation, the images were curated and refined, choosing those where the tension and harmony between past and present could truly speak. This workflow makes "Refusion" an archival intervention, more than just digital collage — it’s a method of re-imagining presence.