Shaped from thousands of straight pins, In Her Own Words was created to honor filmmaker Lana Wachowski’s experiences as a young adult. The piece is a sculptural meditation on Wachowski’s feelings of pain, isolation, and depression as a result of understanding herself as transgender when she was a teenager. When Wachowski received the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award, she delivered a riveting speech. She explained how her suicide attempt as a teenager was thwarted on a train platform by being truly seen by another human being. Wachowski said “I don’t know why he wouldn’t look away, all I know is that because he didn’t I am still here.”
