Jova Lynne is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who is currently an MFA candidate at Cranbrook Academy of Art where she is studying Video/Installation art in the photography department.
Jova Lynne is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. Jova is currently an MFA candidate at Cranbrook Academy of Art where she is studying Video/Installation art in the photography department. Jova has shown works in New York, Oakland and Detroit and recently completed a 4-month artist residency program at Talking Dolls Studios. Jova is a co-creator of collaborative arts based projects such as the Black Survival Mixtape, Black Artists Meet-Up Detroit and WOAH collective. As an educator Jova has an extensive background in facilitating arts-as-social change programs with young people. Jova is the former Youth Arts Manager at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts where for 3 years she facilitated collaborations between youth, incarcerated persons and local grassroots organizations. Most recently, Jova was a teaching artist-in-residence with Detroit Future Schools.
India Davis, a choreographer, trained acrobat, aerialist and pole dancer, combines physical feats with multidisciplinary art forms to illustrate the breadth of her inspirations.
India Davis, a choreographer, trained acrobat, aerialist and pole dancer, combines physical feats with multidisciplinary art forms to illustrate the breadth of her inspirations. Skilled in moving image and writing, her visionary work has been shown both nationwide and internationally and is guided by themes of multi-dimensionality, spirit, and the link between legacy, timelessness and the body. India Davis is the Artistic Director and co-founder of Topsy-Turvy Queer Circus; the company’s sold-out shows have been annually featured in the National Queer Arts Festival since 2013. In February 2016, Davis completed a month-long solo exhibition of performance and visual art entitled From a Place with no Space or Time shown at two Oakland venues: Qulture Collective and The Flight Deck and featured in Bust magazine. In June 2016, she conceived, directed and starred in PARADISE, Topsy-Turvy’s first full-length narrative production that featured an all LGBTQ of color cast. Davis teaches aerial, pole and acrobatic classes throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. She recently co-designed Destiny Arts Center’s groundbreaking new Queer Emerging Artist Residency program.
Cyrée Jarelle Johnson is a black non-binary essayist and poet currently working towards an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University.
Cyrée Jarelle Johnson is a black non-binary essayist and poet currently working towards an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. They are a Poetry Editor at The Deaf Poets Society, a journal of D/deaf and disabled literature and art. Their writing has appeared in make/shift, bedfellows, and has been accepted into Issue 7 of The Suburban Review. Johnson’s writing considers disability as a cyborg reality, community as a state of shared trauma, and afro-pessimism. Their recent invited speaking engagements include the LGBT and Disability Forum at The White House and CARSS Town Hall at Mother Bethel AME Church.
Be Steadwell is a singer songwriter and filmmaker from Washington DC, whose self-produced albums and films feature her earnest lyricism, proud LGBTQI content and unapologetic silliness.
Be Steadwell is a singer songwriter and filmmaker from Washington DC. In her live performances, Be utilizes loop pedal vocal layering and beat boxing to compose her songs on stage. Be’s self-produced albums and films feature her earnest lyricism, proud LGBTQI content and unapologetic silliness. As she pursued her career in music, she began a career in film. Shooting and editing her own music videos, Be combined her love of music with narrative film. In 2014, Be completed an MFA in film from Howard University. Her most recent film, Vow of Silence (2014) received the Howard University Paul Robeson Award (2015), Best Experimental Short at The Black Star Film Festival (2015), Audience Choice Award at QWOCMAP Festival (2015), and was featured at the NYC Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 2016, Be was selected to be a Strathmore Artist in Residence and the DC Commission on the Arts awarded Be an artist fellowship. In April 2016, Be took her music to the UK in a five-show tour. She has conducted songwriting, loop pedal and film workshops for LGBTQI youth groups internationally. Be currently tours her music and film internationally.
awQward is a collective dedicated to the financial sustainability of trans & queer artists of color.
As performers, poet/educator J Mase III & poet/mc/percussionist Vita E. have toured the country and the world. Being featured for their solo work in such publications as Buzzfeed, Colorlines, the New York Times, the Root, the Huffington Post and more, these two together create a powerhouse of words, spit, drums and pure Black Trans Liberation. When these two are not on stage, they spend their days coordinating performances for, and negotiating fair wages for, the artists on the awQward talent roster. awQward being a collective dedicated to the financial sustainability of trans & queer artists of color, these two create a space not just to curate talented performers and orators, but to delve deeply into cooperative economics. In addition to their daily administrative work, these two provide free and low cost consultations to trans & queer artists of color seeking to turn their artistic skills into a workable career, as well as have provided numerous small emergency grants for trans artists of color in crisis.
2017 Global Arts Fund grant funded #BlackTransMagick, a full length show that will travel to LA, New Orleans, DC, New York & Philadelphia.
Annie Gonzaga is a black, lesbian, mother who grew up in the favela in Salvador Bahia, known as one of the most racist and most dangerous cities for LBTQ people in the world.
Annie Gonzaga is a black, lesbian, mother who grew up in the favela in Salvador Bahia, known as one of the most racist and most dangerous cities for LBTQ people in the world. She is a practitioner of Candomblé and lives in the outskirts of Salvador. About her creative practice, Annie states, “I have been resisting and practicing survival for the last 500 years through all my ancestors who have preceded me.” She began to draw at a young age in response to the overt policing of her community and the violence that surrounded her. Annie states, “through art I can understand myself as whole. I can’t publicly assume my religious identity because the public space is dangerous, nor leave my lesbianism locked in the closet because I can suffer lesbophobia on the street, much less undress my color, to finally be accepted, loved and then love myself. These are identities that are with me all the time and in everything I do. And through artivism I could see myself. To create an epistemology, through our ancestral heritages, is to glimpse the Afrofuturist black identity, diasporic utopia re-cognizing our cosmologies and identities. And all this is what I try to express in my art whether on paper or on a wall.”
Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo/Tamil writer and video artist based in liminal spaces.
Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo/Tamil writer and video artist based in liminal spaces. She works in fiction, memoir, experimental shorts, and video art. Her debut novel, FRESHWATER, is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic in Winter 2018 and her video portrait UDUDEAGU won the Audience Award for Best Short Experimental at the 2014 BlackStar Film Festival. Within her work, Akwaeke is interested in transgressive stories that challenge idealistic perceptions of humanity and examine how people navigate their embodiments. Her practice centers themes of neurodivergence, African faith traditions, loss and loneliness, death, dislocations, and liminal identities.
Trans Queer Pueblo, formed in 2016 as a merger between Arcoiris Liberation Team and the Arizona Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, is a grassroots group working for the liberation of trans/queer migrant communities in Phoenix, both in side and outside of detention walls.
Trans Queer Pueblo, formed in 2016 as a merger between Arcoiris Liberation Team and the Arizona Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, is a grassroots group working for the liberation of trans/queer migrant communities in Phoenix, both in side and outside of detention walls. Their key programs fall in four areas: Economic Justice, which builds the economic resilience of formerly detained people; Community Defense, which organizes and builds leadership of trans women; Health Justice, which facilitates access to primary care services and builds leadership of health promoters; and Family Acceptance, which supports and organizes family members of LGBTQ immigrants to engage in migrant justice work. They have organized successful case-by-case advocacy campaigns to free LGBTQ immigrants from detention. They also contributed to winning access to gender-affirming and migration-affirming municipal IDs through participation in the OnePhoenixID campaign and effectively mobilizing immigrant parents to speak out at school and community forums throughout the city.
