transfinity testament
I have been a witness, both in person and over the internet,
the arduous battles of my fellow migrant workers.
Yet, the stark ruthlessness of their lived experiences often eludes my testimonies.
Because living my life feels like staring at a canvas
where my portrait is divided, where its vanishing point veiled.
But this is my reality:
I am here.
All that I stand for and hold onto remains my truth,
a challenge demanding my immediate response.
I have learned to be unrestrained and unmasked. My aim is not just to tell
stories, but to inspire agency, to build and design spaces for inclusivity, especially in
espousing trans visibility and equal rights for all.
This activism extends beyond my art as
I seek to encourage and embrace life in exile. My leaving, after all, is a promise of my return.
This dedication may not measure the ocean’s depth, nor the wondrous landscapes and the breadth of horizons, but it traces tiny tunnels, even the filthiest
estuaries, where I can freely tread until I reach the seas and its boundless vow.
The future may be unclear, but so am I. I am trans/finite, and I remain alive. As Virginia Woolf said, ‘As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world’.
This is my trans/story of finding home.
the other lady gaga
STEFANI J ALVAREZ-BRÜGGMANN, is a transdisciplinary and migrant artist. Her collaborative projects and literary works were featured in the US, UK, Middle East, Europe, and in the Southeast Asia.
An alumna artist-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. Her performative and installation art project, The Other Lady Gaga (TOLG) explores her artistic framework through aural essays, visual poetry, and mixed media. In these works, she documents her autobiographical diasporic dagli, embodying a transgender space of geobodies, borderlands, and identities across (her)story.
At the annual Philippine National Book Awards, her collection Ang Autobiografia ng Ibang Lady Gaga (The Autobiography of the Other Lady Gaga; Visprint, 2015) won Best Book of Nonfiction Prose in Filipino and her coming-of-age novel Kagay-an, At Isang Pag-Ibig sa Panahon ng All-Out War (Kagay-an, Love In The Time of All-Out War; Psicom Publishing, 2018) was finalist in the Best Book of Short Fiction in Filipino category.
From 2008 until 2022, a migrant worker based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She was born in Metro Cagayan de Oro in the southern Philippines.