The Blood Was On Their Shoulders: Mapping Black Intersectional Identities within Curatorial Practice

This thesis examines the artistic projects that hold Black women, trans, and queer intersectional identities as the focal point for creative engagement, conversation, and study. Drawing from predominantly Black, queer, and feminist research materials and methodologies including the texts of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, José Esteban Muñoz, Fred Moten, and others, I collect data through interviews, rehearsals, performance showings, readings, and personal reflections that give voice to the ways in which artists and artist-curators creatively render themes of societal trauma, loss, fugitivity, queerness, and trans perspectives as a strategy for survival and healing for self and community. To provide a critical lens into the art practices of selected artists including Ni’Ja Whitson, M. Lamar, and Vashti DuBois, I introduce the Socio-Choreological Mapping ideology as a conceptual frame for creating more inclusive cultural spaces for people of color. To conclude, as an autoethnographic feature within this thesis, I build parallels between my own work, the community of artists to which I belong, and the larger sociopolitical issues our projects confront.