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Tiq Milan And Kim Katrin Milan: journalists, artists, activists

TIQ MILAN AND KIM KATRIN MILAN: journalists, artists, activists (tiqmilan.comkimkatrinmilan.com)

Kim: I’ve always been interested in opening up the idea of what is considered beautiful or valuable. At the beginning of the year, people are always making commitments about how they are going to change their bodies, and I think it’s important for people to love and honour their bodies. 

Tiq: I wanted to challenge myself, to put myself in a position as a transgender person to show my body and be in my skin publicly, to put myself in that space and learn to love my body more.

Kim: Our love and our relationship is part of our advocacy. There isn’t a lot of diverse representation of black queer couples loving each other and celebrating each others’ bodies and beauty. We want to give an example to our communities. For many people involved with trans people, it’s a hidden thing, and we want to challenge that narrative. There’s nothing secret about the way we love each other: we love each other out loud.

Tiq: As people not tethered to an organization, we’re constantly involved in our work. So we considered doing this shoot as part of our work because we want to be possibility models for other people.

Kim: One of the unique things about the work we do is that we don’t consider it work it’s very much a calling. The way I dress and move is connected to the advocacy work I do. I speak at universities about what it means to nurture young women’s leadership. That means making sure that women have space to be leaders and that people aren’t judging them based on what they’re wearing and what they look like. My image is connected to the question of who gets excluded and what those barriers look like. 

Tiq: I’m writing a book called Man Of My Design, a memoir about my transgender journey. It’s about coming into our most authentic selves and living our own truths. It should be out this summer.

Kim: I’m a curator. I love to create stages for other artists in diverse ways. I’m also doing a photography and video series with Tiq called Blackness Without Borders. And I’m booked up pretty solidly doing speeches and presentations at universities across Canada and North America. I just finished a Tedx talk at Western University. 

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