self portrait as a trans woman soccer logo

Self portrait as a trans woman soccer logo is a miniature painting on the packaging of the artist’s hemophilia medication. In addition to the artist’s former name, “Ramiro Gomez,” other visible text fragments include “IV push 2 times,” referring to the intravenous mode of administering the drug, and “prevention of bleeding.” A silhouetted figure kicking a soccer ball is colored with the blue, pink, and white stripes of the transgender flag. The brooding brushwork in the background suggests a conscious act of omission or erasure.

In addition to referencing Gomez’s own enthusiasm for sports, her self-representation as a soccer logo has special significance at Oberlin College. The National Collegiate Athletics Association named Oberlin the LGBTQ Institution of the Year in 2024, amid the passage of the Ohio legislature House Bill 68, which precludes tranagender women from participating in women’s college sports teams.

This self-portrait comes from the first body of work that Gomez presented publicly following her transition from male to female. Other works from this series include paintings on the packaging of the artist’s estrogen medication, such as the double self-portrait, My Past Self Painting My Present Self (2024). Themes of reinvention and construction are apparent in these works documenting the artist’s gender transition as well as in her large-scale paintings and installations depicting overlooked immigrant laborers. The child of Mexican-born parents, Gomez knows intimately the feeling of being made invisible, as she was often cropped out of photos of the wealthy Los Angeles family for whom she nannied. As a trans woman and a person of color, Gomez highlights the ways in which visibility can be both a privilege and a liability.