Curated by JD Stokely and Bashezo Boyd, “Unbound Bodies” is a multi-stage QTBIPOC art project show aimed at cultivating a QTBIPOC artist community in Boston. The exhibition opened at EMW Bookstore on Dec 2, followed by three community programs including a community dinner, a QTBIPOC Movement/Yoga Practice and closing reception, which take place on Jan 6.
The show features 10 visual artists and 6 performance artists, all identifying as QTBIPOC. Curators Bashezo and J.D. Stokely talked about how their friendship and collaboration emerged over the discussion on QTBIPOC bodies as sites of decolonization, what what a reimagined desire looks like in its process ~ Michelle Song
Bios:
JD Stokely is a trickster-in-training hailing from Philadelphia. Stokely devises, facilitates and curates performances around nostalgia, Queerness, the Black body, and home. Stokely is a co-founder of SUPER|object, a Queer curating collective for emerging artists, and A Collective Apparition, a group of LGBTQ Black artists whose art is “rooted in the past, but poised on the crux of the present & future.”
Bashezo was born and raised in South Philadelphia. Zhe is an interdisciplinary artist who works with clay,wood, metal, and performance art. Bashezo has had solo and group shows in Philadelphia, Boston, and SF/ Bay Area. Common themes throughout zhe’s work are issues around race, gender, sexuality, homo/transphobia, and micro-aggressions. Bashezo is currently enrolled in a MFA program at Mass Art.
Q: Could you talk about how you got to know each other and how the idea of the exhibition came together?
Bashe: we met at a party through some common QTPOC friends. We’re both from Philly, both interested in similar types of art and dreaming up an art space where we can feel like ourselves and where the art speaks to a non-conventional LGBTQIA crowd in this hyper white very cis space in Boston.
The concept of the show came from a discussion around what decolonizing desire looks like. We want to focus on the process instead of products, because the decolonization project is a process that is constantly layered and unlayered. We wanted to invite other artists to speak to the disrobing of colonial thoughts, clothes and desire. I was particularly interested in what black love and black art looks like in a celebratory way.
Stokely: There was a joke my friends had about me on how I hate spoken word. There’s nothing wrong with it but we want to see other forms of performance. As a performance artist many people assume all I do is spoken word, but in fact there are so many other types of performances. We want to make space for welcoming other types of experimental expressions.
When we first started talking about doing the show, we had to get comfortable about saying we are curators. Even though I was curating queer spaces in Philly, I never claimed that name. The idea of claiming that title was a critical part of our collaboration. Unraveling unbound bodies is the process of QTPOC desire, and also about the process of creating community. It’s not just about the work itself, it’s about us coming together and recognizing that this is an ongoing process.
Bashe: This process, to me, is about unraveling and coming together to create something new. We’re all exploring what it means to articulate QTPOC desire, but from its discards something very exciting emerges.
curators Bashezo & Stokely
Q: I want to know what it’s like to work with each other, especially compared to previous iterations of queer spaces you’ve been involved with outside of Boston.
S: I think we work very well together and balance each other out. A couple of weeks ago we went to a workshop in PhIlly and discovered that we had different ways to approaching the work, my way of working is slower and more methodical, Bashe is works fast, and is more instinctual. I’m more of a director and dramaturg, and Bashe comes from a sculpture and performance background–they can build you a shelf or a platform, and I’m more patient, acting as a mediator.
We’re still looking for new ways to work together, and the fact that we’re still friends is incredible!
B: I wanted a larger creative community. We didn’t know what was emerge out of this, yet we know that we had lots of love and a huge desire for a space like this. Things fell into place very seamlessly. I’m a very analogue kind of person and I don’t do social media. Stokely on the other hand was very active on social media. So our collaboration developed very organically.
Grad school was a hard time for be because is was very much focused on the isolated, single artist. I really needed to be in a community where I can work with someone who I love and feel excitement through that. I’m super fortunate that we’re able to do this work together and have it be so well received. It’s about creating a space where we can come as ourselves–as black, indigenous, or queer folx.
S: By the way, a quick shout out to our communities and the network that we have. Given our limited resource and immediate network, we couldn’t have done the project without the help of many friends and their extended networks.
B: Our community members were so willing to share their love, energy and patience. With this event, our community has already grown in ways that we didn’t know. Stokely and I have only been friends for less than a year, and to see this idea come so far was amazing. All of this goes to show how much people thirst for a community like this.
Opening Reception
Q: How does an art show as a format constructive to building a QTBIPOC community and does the result surprise you?
S: This is my first time curating a visual arts show, so in some ways the form is very new to me since I have been more performance-focused. Something about an art show that felt similar to me with performance, was the fact that the art changed when people were in the space. My Philly collective used to do these work-in-progress nights, in which we would invite audiences and mentors to sit in our rehearsals and give us feedbacks. The discussion of having a process where we see each other’s work and cross-pollinate ideas was something that made the art show happen in the first place. We wanted to find a way to incorporate this work-in-progress idea to the art project.
B: We both came from more performance backgrounds. While envisioning this space we paid attention to what types of artistic practices didn’t have space here in Boston. Even though I don’t produce 2D work, I recognize that there’s very little space for black, indigenous, queer POC to show their works. We see a lot of spoken word happening here in Boston so we’d like to see something that Boston lacks. QTBIPOC folx are typically very creative, for many reasons. When we put these ideas together we kind of see them as threads that come together and creating something else.
I can’t tell you how many times where I was the only black person in a show. Making art is vulnerable. In white cis spaces when we bring our works as QTPOC folx, the contents sometimes get lost, fetishized, or messy. With this show, we intentionally put the artworks together to co-create this beautiful fabric. The ways in which the works talk to each other were very different than when we were looking at them individually, it was very magical. The 2D, sculpture and videos initiated the space, and the activities–workshops, community dinner, and performances–help to build and expand the space.
We’re able to see multiple types of collaboration, some intentional and some are surprises, and immaterial. It’s such a great feeling to witness them without feeling any kind of ownership over it.
S: What I hope is apparent in the show is that the art is still a work-in-progress, something that invites dialogues and engagement. I think our audience got that the space and the works are about process instead of a finished product. Coming from a non-profit background, where it was very product-driven, where everything was taken at face value, and where race just means color, there was a lack of space for people to feel comfortable as their whole selves. The show was an attempt to create a space where we can bring our full, messy selves together.
Q: How did your curatorial intentions come into play while working with the artists?
B: the show happened really quickly. There were certain things we wish we had more time for. We were specifically looking for QTPOC folx for the show. There were so much baggage around desire in a. We wanted to hear from folx who usually didn’t have the space they deserve to create.We want to cultivate a space who had a hard time considering themselves as creatives or artists.
S: There are other specific logistics that were very important for us as curators. For instance, it’s really important that we didn’t charge any fees to artists. Any money made through the artworks goes straight to the artist. Those are very intentional choices we made.
artworks – Lo McDowell (top left), Eva Wo & Ociele Hawkins (top right), Sarah Hakani (bottom left), Tatia Cynae (bottom right)
Q: Could you talk about the name of this show? How do body and desire act as a focal point in cultivating a QTBIPOC community?
B: The title emerged after we talked about what type of show we want to create.
I think the body can be such a political site. It has its own kind of mappings. The way in which we move through the world, and especially the cis white world, for me, is assigned to different parts of my body. I want to get out of the theoretical and verbal mindset, but really think about embodiment. There’s so much about my practice and daily experience that revolves around my body — its health, its disconnections, being present or absent, etc.
The idea of desire, of course is very sexual and very erotic. But to desire me can be a very expansive can be thought of as a way to walk in the world, connection with our ancestors, and queer love.
Removing restrictions imposed on our bodies, and develop a healthier and more embodied sense of ourselves, with our bodies being on the forefront. Instead of What does it feel like? What does it smell like, taste like, what is the quality of the experience?
S: I usually think about undesirability but you can’t think about that without thinking about desire.
For me desire is really a synonym for choice, in order to desire, you have to say “I want”. But a lot of times QTPOC has very little choice in how we move in the world. Especially as a black person, in some parts of the world I don’t have a choice in how I’m perceived. So it was really important for us to use the idea of decolonizing desire as a jumping off point to think about what it means to choose ourselves, desire ourselves, and opt in to being in a place with each other and being present with each other.
Bashe talks about this idea of a disparate body. I think disparate body is a good metaphor for the QTBIPOC community. By having a qtbipoc show, we can sort of acknowledge that we’re not just one monolithic thing
B: there’s this notion of body as a cohesive machine. But a lot of us don’t have cohesive bodies. As opposed to trying to reify cohesion, if we accept that we are made up of all these different things, sometimes they’re working well together and sometimes they’re not, sometimes then we’re thinking in hybridity. Even the smallest molecular way, our body is changing and reforming. I think if we’re always thinking about our bodies as a whole, we’re limiting possibilities to expand and grow.
Azita Moradkhan and Jeremy Endo performance piece
Q: What are the next steps of your collaboration? Any advice for emerging QTPOC curators and artists?
S: Personally I’m finishing a piece I’ve been working on for two years. As an emerging curator, one thing that’s very valuable for me is mentorship, not just in the hierarchical sense, but finding like-minded people and build visions and networks together. Find people to help you is so important.
B: We are ruminating on what the next shows will look like, a part of that is talking about creating a space that extends beyond the two of us, one that sustains. We really want to see a QTBIPOC artist collective, a community where we’re not always under the pressure to make work in response to trauma. Advice– take care about the process. Don’t forget that it’s important to care for ourselves.
S: As curators we’re still practicing to hone our skills.
Press contact: Tyahra Simone Angus @afrocenteredmedia
