Queer Artists of Colour

Back

LGBTQ+ history is not finished yet

To mark the end of LGBTQ+ History Month, the SODA team looks forward to three historical moments that still need to happen in queer equality
Opinions

The SPLASH

Your fortnightly dose of creativity from 'The SPLASH'
The Splash

This is our Virtual Reality

How is VR is changing our reality as we know it...?
Opinions

The SPLASH

The latest in creativity from the SODA team.
The Splash

The Value of Public Art

SODA highlights some of London’s best examples of public art for good.
Art & Design

The Splash

The week in creativity brought to you...
The Splash

To Build a Place

What makes a place a place
Art & Design

The SPLASH

The week in creativity explored...
The Splash

Plastic Free July

Plastic Free July round up
Opinions

THE SPLASH

A creative roundup of the week
The Splash

Painting a Clearer Picture

As art galleries reopen their doors, the SODA team highlight some of the most exciting new exhibitions coming to the capital this summer.
Art & Design

03.07.20

A weekly series exploring the new and practical ways that creatives are responding to COVID19...
Make Good

Movement in Colour

An exploration of how colour is used to define different movements
Opinions

19.06.20

A weekly series exploring the new and practical ways that creatives are responding to COVID19...
Make Good

Queer Artists of Colour

To celebrate Pride 2020, SODA highlights the cultural and artistic contributions of queer people of colour to our industry.
People

21.05.20

A weekly series exploring the new and practical ways that creatives are responding to COVID19...
Make Good

07.05.20

A weekly series exploring the new and practical ways that creatives are responding to COVID19...
Make Good

Make Good

A weekly series exploring the new and practical ways that creatives are responding to COVID19...
Make Good

THE SPLASH

New Year, New SPLASH...dive down into our creative roundup!
The Splash

THE SPLASH

The SPLASH is back...
The Splash

Jesper Eriksson - Transformative Materials

We sat down with the London based artist to discuss coal, fossil fuels and the nature of materials.
People

KASIA WOZNIAK & LISA JAHOVIC

Photographer Kasia Wozniak and set designer Lisa Jahovic present 'Negative Mirror' ...
Projects

PRIDE 2018

Here’s our pick of the best Pride campaigns of 2018 ...
The Splash

Photo Diary

Whilst attending Biennale Architettura 2018 Rob Fiehn documented some well known faces with his trusty Olympus OM20 ...
People

'Freespace' Preview

Architectural correspondent Rob Fiehn picks his highlights to check out this summer at Biennale Architettura 2018 ...
Opinions

Gavin Coyle - man of the woods

Bobby Jewell sits down with furniture maker Gavin Coyle ...
People

Christiane Spangsberg - Works In Progress

Imogen Eveson spends an evening in Sydney with Danish artist Christiane Spangsberg, as she sketches out the year ahead following three sell-out shows in 13 months ...
People

Rowan Williams on Education

Designer Rowan Williams reflects on his experience of his design education ...
People

14.12.17

It's our last creative news round-up of 2017 .... Enjoy!
The Splash

Adventures in Dalbergia

We paid a visit to the studio of Federico Méndez-Castro, a fine dust maker located on Granville Island, Vancouver ...
People

mario macilau

The extraordinary, everyday ...
People

30.11.17

'Tis the season to be jolly (almost!). Before the holiday season sweeps you off your feet take five minutes to have a look our latest round-up of creative news. Enjoy!
The Splash

The Goldloxe Effect

Creating in the shadows ...
People

The Enduring Allure Of Indigo

Jenny Balfour Paul shares what makes the power and draw of natural indigo so enduring and what we can learn from its rich and magical history ...
People

10.11.17

An audio visual explosion this week, plus an array of very very interesting objects from Athens ... Enjoy!
The Splash

TAKESHI MIYAKAWA

We chat to the NYC based designer about his practice, wax chandeliers & chairs having conversations ...
People

Empty spaces to extraordinary experiences

Museum and interior design practice Casson Mann talk about how they create world-class innovative and engaging experiences.
People

20.10.17

Ease into the start of the weekend with another round-up of creative news ...

SODA x SODA

That name sounds familiar! Rob Fiehn sits down with architectural studio SODA to find out about their Soho beginnings and how they're searching out interesting new projects.
People

loading...

Queer Artists of Colour

As we enter Pride month, it is essential to recognise that the LGBTQ+ community would be nowhere without people of colour. Black and Latinx transgender women such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera spearheaded the Stonewall riots, a watershed moment in history that determined the future of queer rights. The global LGBTQ+ community is indebted to the anger, resilience and determination of people of colour, whose relentless pursuit of equality is fundamental to social and political reform.

To celebrate Pride 2020, SODA highlights the cultural and artistic contributions of queer people of colour to our industry. In a time of great division and uncertainty, it is more important than ever to honour the diversity that defines the creative community and recognise those who are producing truly innovative work.

Davinia-Ann Robinson - 'Earth, Body' (2020)

Davinia-Ann Robinson’s art explores the experience of navigating a simultaneously colonial and patriarchal world. Central to this exploration is the black female body, for bodies of colour have been inscribed by sexist and racialised biases for centuries. Her work seeks to investigate the ways that black women’s emotions are shaped by colonial legacies, while pointing to the profound effect that this has on their physical and psychic experiences of place. Davinia’s most recent piece, Earth, Body (2020), achieves this by combining earth and castings of abstract body parts to explore where bodies of colour reside in colonial spaces, questions of power, and the blurred lines of consent that shape women’s everyday lives.

Davinia-Ann is also a founding member of Narration Group, a collective of Women and Non-Binary people of colour. The creative group seeks to reclaim the narratives rendered invisible by dominant social, cultural, and political discourse in western culture, and carve out a space for queer, non-white artists moving forward.

Marco DaSilva ‘Neither Here Nor There’ (2019)

Marco DaSilva’s multi disciplinary art looks to explore the intersections between his Brazilian-American heritage, Queer identity and his experiences growing up in New York City. His paintings use bright neon colours in combination with striking graphic symbols to evoke a tropical mood of vice and opulence mirrored in the political, economic and social ideologies of his two identities. This is distinctly apparent in his recent show ‘Neither Here Nor There’ (2019) with fellow Latin-Ameircan artist Edward Salas, in which they rethink the emblematic New York City Skyline as a symbol for identity, culture, the urban environment, love, and spirituality. The textured hybrid paintings, made of non-traditional materials, reflect a dual identity and sense of belonging that is not rooted in one place, but often floating between two spaces. These works are a manifestation of their understanding of this lived experience.

Patrisse Cullors

Patrisse Cullors is a queer American artist, writer and activist. An advocate for prison abolition in her native LA, Patrisse is one of the three female co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. Brought up in the Jehovah’s Witness community Cullors was forced to leave home when she came out to her parents at the age of 16. Disillusioned by the teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses Cullors developed an interest in the Nigerian religious tradition of Ifa and has since incorporated its rituals into protest events and her creative work.

Trained as a dancer, Cullors produces and directs performance pieces as well as creating docu-series. Along with Asha Bandele, Cullors co-authored the New York Times bestseller ‘When They Call You a Terrorist’. As an artist, her work focuses on black trauma, healing and resilience and has been performed in theatres and galleries throughout the world. Cullors’ latest performance piece will be “A Prayer for the Runner”. The piece is centred around a prayer she co-wrote with Damon Turner. Cullors describes the piece as a ‘public act of mourning” over the senseless death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, America. Cullors will perform the piece this Saturday, 13th June, at 12 pm PDT during a series of virtual events the Fowler Museum at UCLA has organised for Pride Month. You can sign up to watch the event via Zoom for free here.

Myles Loftin 'In the Life' (2020)

Myles Loftin recognises the latent power that images hold, and seeks to utilise that power as a means for creating positive change. Still just 22, he is a photographer, director and has shot ads for Adidas and Under Armour and editorial photographs for New York and W magazine. As a queer black male his work focuses on themes of blackness, identity, and representation of marginalised individuals through a unique photographic style which exudes a feeling of vibrance, freedom and youth.

This exploration of what it means to be queer and black has been the central subject of his latest project ‘In the Life’, which expands on feelings of ostracisation in both the general queer populous as well as the black community. This is particularly apparent in photography where there is a distinct lack of visual representation granted to queer identities though the medium. Myles’ photographs aim to elevate the mundanity and humanity of our collective lived experiences by creating images that depict black queer people both in public and intimate settings.

Creativity is about celebrating uniqueness, individuality and standing out from the crowd. Yet, it also centres around collaboration, community and a collective effort to make work that progresses our world. Only by recognising the creative contributions of people of colour to the queer community can we truly honor Pride 2020.

soda-s
  • Words by The SODA Team
Further Reading:
fullscreen
close

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Catch up on all the latest news from State Of Design Affairs right in your inbox.

Remind me later
Please dont ask me again

Thank you for signing up, don't forget to check your inbox to confirm your email.