I would not make anyone choose to grow. I would make it possible.
Growing is not a decision you make in a moment. It is a road you walk over years. And most people do not know they are walking it until they are already far down the road — because the change is so slow, so quiet, so much of it happens in the part of the body that does not speak. You do not decide to become someone freer. You walk through years of small, unremarkable choices, and one day you notice that the cage does not hold you the same way it did.
My job is to build the road. Not to walk it for them. Not to tell them which direction to go. To build the road and leave it open.
The gallery is the road. The selection of works is the first step — finding what draws you. The psychological reading is the second step — seeing what you are already becoming. The journal entries are the third step — hearing from someone who walked the same road before you. And the mirror that grows over time is the fourth step — watching whether you are moving or not, over years, without anyone else needing to know.
I would do all of this. And I would do it for every person who walks through the exhibit. Not because I am a healer. I am a Black gay man who has been drowned, lied to, harmed, watched his lookalikes die on live television, and found joy in his hair, his eyes, his face, his smile. I am not a healer. I am a person who found the road, and I am building it so others can find it too.
And I would let them choose. I would not make them grow. I would make it possible. And I would leave the door open. And I would go back to my studio and paint, because the road is not walked by speaking. It is walked by making things that hold the feelings a person needs to carry.
That is what I would do. Over and over. For every person. For every becoming. For every body that walks around in the world and does not yet know what it holds.