Sovereign

SovereignBurn Something Collective

Curatorial Statement

History is omnipresent. It tethers itself to us—unified earth people.

It reminds us that we’re neither celestial nor exempt from grief. Sometimes this makes me feel like my chest is full of molasses. Heart, and lungs and bone and sinew, pushing and pulling to escape the sticky.

I take a breath, I shatter.

History is omnipresent. It tethers itself to us. It reminds us that our fragments are textiles And exhibitions

Creating luminous mosaics when we pick them up and hold them alongside one another. In tandem, fractured light. Tar and honey.

It’s like the air here is thicker than it used to be.

I am tired of feeling so much about this. My body has felt so far away.

Pleasure is knowing that time is spiralic. I can enjoy life this time around.

Even pleasure in the deepest of sorrows because you’ve spent your whole life denying yourself the space to feel it.

I feel grateful and overwhelmed. And I feel guilty.

When I tell people to trust themselves, it can be because I have learned to do it even when feelings do not match thoughts.

Who could say that I would get so much out of a flower? A sunset? A kiss, an unfamiliar touch, the sun on my face, the smell of sweat and body, my comforter swaddling my skin on a cool summer night?

Terracotta pumice, smoothing out the rough skin under my feet.

I want to bring the habits of my life closer to all of these things.

I am alive somewhere inside of here.

Sovereign is a collection of works reflecting on the many forms the erotic takes, the openings and pleasurable contractions that come from finding, attuning to, and deepening the sacred bond that we share with the natural world, with one another. Our contributors explore many ways into this work through a radical queer feminist lens: polyamory, self-pleasure and affirmation, shame and guilt, pornography, ritual, astrology, and botanical reverie. This spectrum of emotion splays wide open.

The erotic as power, which holds no dominion over another, but which links us to our collective joy, to our collective liberation, is a place where pain reverberates us together rather than apart.

Enjoy this deep dive in, through so many circuitous paths.

“Once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.”

Audre Lorde

Uses of the Erotic

Desires of the Devil (1971): A Study in Three Parts by Gen DeLeon

(to be read alongside the film listed in the title)

text: .

voice: I walk alone. I ask the ocean if I am okay as I am, queer, uneasily gendered, an alien.

image:

Little income, little to do, I come upon a house, open and warm.

The open beach. The mark of bike tires dug into sand. The film, blurry: sea bleeding into sky. Is it midafternoon? Birds pick along the outer edge of the water. Red rocks. A cliff’s edge. Behind the boardwalk, the awning of a building. Three rocks protrude from the water, breaking through waves. An undisturbed boulder cutting into the water’s edge.

I am slipping below middle class; this room reminds me of home. Show me how it moves, the elegance of having a place I own with a living room adorned with books. I am slipping into anonymity. I am inseparable from a material world I do not own or shape.

Then, cement stairs, flat, unadorned. Through hanging boughs and plants sprouting in a small garden, a flowering branch pushes aside, toward a door, slid open. Past a ladder, the entrance, separated by screen and glass. Curtain, corner: a living room lit, ready.

Quaint, sparsely decorated, it is

“...Satan’s premortal rebellion and fall stripped him of the right to have a mortal body. However, the tendency is to assume that Joseph is here saying that Lucifer’s “spirit body” is therefore void of any physical properties. Yet this is clearly not what the Prophet is claiming. Regarding the physical nature of the “spirit body,” the Prophet notes “that the body is supposed to be organized matter, and the spirit, by many, is thought to be immaterial, without substance. With this latter statement we should beg leave to differ, and state that spirit is a substance; that it is material, but that it is more pure, elastic and refined matter than the body.”[33]

The strange thing is this is how I intended it this way. A clock with no hands, a hint of militarism: my ritual life pervades my sexual life. Lines drawn from the living to the dead. Even in sex, the dead present themselves. Our spirit lights up like a way finding device in ecstatic release.

Certainly as my body calls for a child, I am shaping an iron in the designs of my ancestors. Heart of sky, heart of earth. I summon a light from across the galaxies. I am an earth with two cores. Let me clear my energy for this act. Water running, a white tunic dropped. My body awaiting ritual transformation.

maintained within modest means. No immediate signs of the occult, until, over the fire: a painting of a black figure with hand upturned, reclined, one leg up, like an icon, a nymph-like glyph, on gold. Bricks painted white form the mantle. Beneath it, flames licking. A marble dove, perched and frozen. A handwritten note. A bottle, rum or whiskey. The wooden bust of a black face. On the shelves: a clock with no hands. A hint of militarism: a spiked helmet. Books upon books, a beer, abandoned, mid-conversation. Spines of volumes, encyclopedic, of history, esoteric. The space is heady: the alcohol, the fire, the density of thought. In the bathroom, above the toilet, next to the sink, a small bottle of Eau de toilet, delicate, anticipating his body. Curling grates on the windows. The mottled glass of the shower. The green-grey tiles, the black tile trim. A homely mirror. A warm shower started.

My body awaiting ritual transformation.

At the beginning of a Vodou ceremony, vèvè will be consecrated with the sprinkling of dried foodstuffs; a libation (offered three times) of rum, water, or some other appropriate drink; and the lighting of a white candle. (Ama Mazama, Britannica)

Here are my things: the statues I prostrate to, the talisman I wear, heavy and beaded, a tapestry on which I present my offerings –cacao, light, water, flower petals.

Watching the sex of a ritualist, I understand the preparation is the sex as much as anything else. The sheets of the bed, the oil at the bedside, an altar ready for its offering.

The door closing, a view of the quaint layout born out. One flower hiding above the toilet: all stalk with thick leaves. A rack with a coral towel. The simple metal handle. A plain bar of soap. Ripping the door open. A white tunic dropped to the floor. Water still running, the cleansing before the ritual. At minute 6, the altar hosts a fire. An open book. A white statue, honored with candles. A six-pointed star, the talisman of Saturn, the seal of Solomon. A metal cross hanging near the table. Underlying the altar: a fringed, woven tapestry that comes to a point. Black fabric dramatically staged behind the altar objects. Then, a bedside table, with lotion and oil in matching bottles. A lamp with an orb-like base, its shade towering, casting light on bronze fixtures. On the walls: strips of mottled patterning

Vèvè, Vodou

symbol: in Haitian Vodou, geometrical drawings that represent the lwa (spirits). The production of vèvè is a tradition of African origin. In Dahomey, an ancient kingdom in the region that is now southern Benin, palm oil was used to draw certain geometrical figures, such as rectangles and squares, on the ground. The practice of drawing ritual emblems on the ground is also attested in Central Africa, and the practice of producing vèvè in Haiti may owe its origin to a western African and Central African cultural convergence. Some scholars have also pointed to the existence of a similar practice among the Taino and Arawak peoples, with whom Africans came into contact in Haiti.

I also understand that the room collaborates. We fortify the strength of its walls as we act. It is a witness, an elder who has been here, who can contain the work among bodies slipping between states of consciousness.

When the fire enlarges, I always fear an ember will lift off, light up the tar surface of our building, catch the dry needles of the pines in the park. The blaze enlarges but not here, there –across the divide. The swords aren’t for cutting, they are for reaching.

alongside strips of brown. The wooden bed frame, simple and geometric, a rectangle within a rectangle. White sheets at bottom, dusty sage green pillows, a thin beige topper. Finally, the fire enlarges. A large golden sword, raised. Entering a triangle encased in a circle on a maroon carpet. Tracing the circle, tracing the triangle. A candle at the topmost point. A candle at each point. The raising of two swords, one long, one short. A coin necklace dangling. A small, white icon placed at the center of a white crumpled linen cloth. Each of the four corners turned in, revealing details of the broaceded surface. Each of those corners, in turn, turned in. Anointed liquid. Then, two further folds. Another release of liquid. The unsheathing of a sword. The swords crossed on the figure, swaddled.

of liquid. The unsheathing of a sword. The swords crossed on the figure, swaddled.

Vèvè can be quite elaborate or simple. They are drawn on the earthen floor of the peristyle (temple), using cornmeal or ashes, and their realization, usually by an oungan (priest) or manbo (priestess), requires a great deal of expertise.

Vèvè are central to Vodou rituals because they are meant to compel the descending or ascending of the spiritual energy associated with a particular lwa.

A reach across the divide is a departure. I leave cities, partners, practices. Ritual experimentation is a crossing of swords. One long, one short. The linen of ritual magic swaddles new life. In it is an embryo

In each other’s mouths, I wonder: does a priest preside over their subject? Or is the priest doubly dommed –serving the spirit and the client’s body both? The climax of the work is not ejaculate but bodies entangled

in an offering of love and respite.

Ritual does not offer answers. It is in process, always. Divination is a process without end. Our will engages with what will be.

The mottled wallpaper like a fake wood grain. A drawing of himself as a priest. This time, the altar from behind. The spread cast in a beautiful light. Shadows on the walls, on the bed. The brown undersheet, like sand, a ritual ground. And the boulder raised tall amidst the water.

Vèvè are always traced near the potomitan, the central pillar of the peristyle, the magical axis through which the lwa are believed to come into the world of the living. In fact, vèvè are a material representation of the lwa and are considered magic points.

As the film cuts to the ocean, I can think more clearly. Aren’t we the demon who disrupts the unity of the earth?

There is no banishing desire, I tell my body. There is only unlocking it, showing it out of the narrow door of the body into a vast ocean expanse.

The fire that puts me out

We are in the woods. A squirrel touches the wind, measures and taps the wind. The wind carries our attention, carries the air of dangerous things then shirks our sense. Something in that signals an abrasion to my attachments, so I bolt.

The light has collapsed my seedlings and they have collapsed because I am in a state that has fallen my house into various states of disorder. Something in that says do not feed so much of my medicine. This life, healing is not all medicine.

The brick jutting out from the creek in the middle of the wood is, was, once the center of some city. All water is a river and the sun, something of it says, I am not yours. I simply till my plot of matter in the sky and die, sooner than you think.

My mother, one of them said to me, you did not come from me. You came from me as much as you came from that slab of stone where you sit and stew. If you are so full of need, worship that.

So I worship that. The song we sung with our eyes closed and our heads thrown back sloughed off and left nothing but matter. So I worship the neon red illuminating the 24 hour Walgreens sign. It is either all sacred or it isn’t.

I worship the stomach aches that tilt my spine ever forward into the shape of a sun. I worship aging and the worshipping of youth. I worship my amusement that anyone tried to make a bastard of the matter that made blackness of us.

I accept that which will distract me for the rest of my life. That my body is either perfect or a curse, that I am either curse or blessing. I am as much earth as I am sea. I am nautilus and syzygy.

And death is my favorite blessing, the body’s sixth and final sense, the cloak over my shoulders with whom I court and dance and dile que no. They say everything is sex, no. Everything is a billboard in Ohio, the field where it stands, how you don’t even see it.

In astrology, Pluto is the master of self-mastery through underworld transformation. The smallest, furthest planet in our solar system influences the deepest power struggles in every landscape, from the individual to the societal, egging on a bevy of revolutions toward our clearest truths. In the birth chart, Pluto in the first house of the self can signify a physical appearance that challenges the expectations of the native’s assigned gender, deviating from cisgender norms. The result is a body borne from dissent, or an observable underworld that resists incessant attempts to be buried.

In my birth chart, Pluto and Venus, muse of beauty and creation, perch tightly together in my first house under Scorpio. Sometimes, in my mind, this oddball union is a directive, reinforcing an innate capacity for endless transformation. They are co-conspirators, plotting against the desirability politics that rip bodies into parts, liberating my capacity to understand the true expansiveness of desire, power, and pleasure. Other times, like today, they shine a piercing light into the chasm between myself and everything I’ve always believed I could never have. Their light conjures stark outlines of the crushes that crushed me, the bite and kiss of a lover on my inner knee, the escapist fantasies of my baby me, the love letters written on vellum, and every time I sacrificed a piece myself for what I thought would be love, or even attention. Sometimes it was either. Often, it was something else. Peering down from the edge of my bed, I crawl back to the center of my mattress and pull the covers over my head.

Here, alone, the weight of the body that tethers me. My wide palms rest on my plush stomach and my thighs embrace each other. My feet are throbbing and crusted with dead skin. I move my hand toward the short coils of my hair and twirl them in my fingers. An androgynous copy of my auntie Debra but with smaller tiddies, my body is a hairy animal with fat folds and tight calves and pain in most places. It only wants to feel good, but I have learned that it is good to make it feel bad. It is good to take away the things it likes, to tell it it is not a fun time, to tell it it cannot keep up, to make sure it hears me.

Mare Lodu in conversation with Lauren Coleman ✣ ✥

Mare: What has been your experience navigating ethical nonmonogamy as a queer Black femme and what are some of the joys and frustrations that come with it?

Lauren: I first made an attempt at ethical non-monogamy several years ago. I met a queer white woman when I was in college at a house party and we flirted a lot. I was actually not quite out at the time–this was probably like, oh, 2012-2013. I was hanging out with a friend who was very, very toxic and emotionally abusive so a lot was happening at the time. Anyway, we hit it off and eventually started hooking up. It was a very casual friend-with-benefits type situation. We connected on and off for like three years, and I eventually proposed the idea of being in a relationship and she's like, “yeah, I like you, this seems inevitable.” I'd run into her while out dancing, which was the backdrop for starting that conversation. I was being very flirtatious and affectionate with her that evening, I didn't even think about her being partnered until after the fact.

We made brunch plans after this conversation, and I was like, “oh my God, I forgot that the last time I talked to you, you were like in a partnership with somebody, and I feel like I crossed the line. I'm so sorry. I had a really weird night. I was in a weird place emotionally, but that's like, no excuse.” And she was like, “oh no, no, no. I appreciate you being thoughtful and considerate of that and you’re right–I am partnered, I'm married. We've been married for a little over a year, but we're open. So we just have to talk more about what we want to do and involve her in the conversation.”

And so we did. We talked about what we were interested in, and then I met her then-wife (they are now divorced). It was my first time being like, whoa, I'm dating a married woman, but this isn’t a homewrecker situation. It was really exciting, but I also had no idea what I was really doing, and that's mostly how I’ve learned with a lot of my

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non-monogamous relationships. I've just had to figure out what really works and what doesn't. A big part of non-monogamous relationships is communication. It's about leaning into what feels good, what doesn't feel good and knowing how to co-regulate with different people in different relationships. Since my first experience it’s been a whirlwind, and I've learned a lot about myself, what I want or can't tolerate, and how much growth or self work is needed to make these kinds of relationships work. I'm learning how to love in different ways, and I'm learning how to be more authentic with myself and with the people I'm in relationship with, which is cool.

I am still Black and queer in the Twin Cities so that means I deal with rejection in unique ways. I read something by someone–I think it was Da'Shaun L. Harrison–about how they wanted to feel chosen by having been in relationships with people where they were desired and that was clear but they never really felt chosen. I identify with that as a dark skin Black person. People find comfort in “cool,” “alternative black people'' who make non-black folks and white people feel good, but you're either discarded or just a step before they meet someone they actually want to date. I definitely had to navigate a lot of that prior to navigating ethical non-monogamy and it's challenging. It can be really heartbreaking and frustrating, but I think it provides a lot of clarity regarding people who do show up and make their love and affection for me known. I've learned how to assess some of that in the process.

Mare: As someone who isn’t non-monogamous, one thing I do appreciate about that model is that it offers a more fluid and open way of experiencing and sharing intimacy with people. It also requires a consistent flow of communication between everyone involved to uphold whatever terms are agreed upon.

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Lauren: Right. There’s no one way of doing it, but the fact that it necessitates continuous dialogue makes it useful. Even beyond the confines of a romantic relationship it requires communication. There are obviously white people who practice non-monogamy but their whiteness is ever present. It's sort of like, if you can take it this far, um, and practice being in relationships with people in this very fluid way, you're going to also have to confront how your whiteness shows up in these relationships.

Mare: Let’s talk about play parties. What’s been your experience

attending and organizing play parties? What factors go into planning a play party?

Lauren: I'll start with a broad definition for people who aren’t familiar with play parties. Play parties are gatherings that are technically sexual in nature but don't have to be. People can hang out and engage in sexual things, engage in kinky things, or just be completely social. The first one I attended was in 2018 and it was really incredible. My friend Dom talks a lot with me about his process and what he wants the space to be. It's about meeting people, the social element is a major aspect of play parties. It's about having a safe space for sexual exploration. A lot of people have feelings about the words "safe space," including myself, but it's about being intentional with the kind of people and practices that happen in a space like that. People can socialize and not feel obligated to do anything.

So if you attend play party and you think, “Oh my God, I'm going to have sex with all these people” and then you get there and you realize that's actually not what you want to do–that's OK! Not all spaces are like that, though. In some play party spaces, you show up and there's an expectation that you engage in sexual things and that's the intentionality around you going, but that's not the case here.

If you do want to engage in any sexual activities, you must get enthusiastic consent every step of the way. One of the games we play to practice enthusiastic consent involves getting a small group together and pretending to order a pizza. Everybody goes around suggesting a topping and people can either say yes I want that on a pizza or no. It’s meant to illustrate that saying no to different sexual things is as easy as saying no to a pizza topping.

There's another game where you hold hands with somebody for 30 seconds at a time. During that process, one person in a pair will describe exactly how they want the other person to touch their hand. It's a practice on how to communicate your wants to someone before and during a sexual encounter with someone you may not know. It's also just a way for everyone to introduce themselves and to get comfortable with saying no, giving and receiving directions, learning names and pronouns.

As the night goes on, it's kind of fluid and people can go into different

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spaces. There's an area for game playing. There's an area for snacks and treats. There's an area for play and for sex and sexy things. There's an area for people who want to get into kink or do impact play or things that might be more intense. There's a place for everything. What I like about Dom is that he wants people to feel comfortable. He wants people to feel like they can engage if they want to engage. I appreciated that the first time I went to a play party, I spent most of the night talking to people. I didn't enter the play area until 3 in the morning. It was really exciting. I messed around with someone and it was super chill and now I have this new interesting connection with somebody in a space I didn't expect.

Mare: Have you had encounters with people who you were afraid to approach in the past or never had a real opportunity to speak to outside of this space?

Lauren: Kind of. There are a number of people who I’ve definitely gotten closer to. There are a handful of people I’ve seen around or engage with online who I’ve wanted to connect with and was finally able to connect with at play parties. I've met a lot of people who I now consider close friends and people who I’ve ended up dating or being involved with to some degree. There's a spectrum, a fluid variety of connections you can make with people in spaces like this.

Mare: Are there any specific people, experiences or things that helped shape your journey of sexual exploration? What helped you become comfortable with expressing yourself and actively seeking out intimacy with people?

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Lauren: I think about the media I've consumed. As I got older I realized that I wasn't actually a monogamous person. As a kid, I remember seeing my parents who are happily married and thinking that marriage could be cool. At a certain point, I became obsessed with the idea of being someone's wife. I used to watch Good Morning America. It was our morning news show of choice. I would be in the kitchen eating before school and watching Good Morning America. You know, suddenly there’s a big surprise proposal that happens and I was like, ‘Wow, that's so sweet. That's going to be me one day.’ Then years later, I was like, that's fucking weird that I was really jazzed about being a person's wife. Not to say that you can't be excited about marriage, but it came from a place of socialization. I don't actually know if I want that.

I had relationships here and there in high school and then in college. And in college, I was more ambiguously involved with people in friends with benefits situations. That required working through a lot of guilt and shame. I remember watching a lot of TV shows like Living Single and Sex and the City. Just seeing these women talk about their relationships and the things that they wanted and going for it. I was like, That's crazy that they're having lunch and drinking Cosmos and talking about getting dick. That's inspiring. I've always had this appeal and attraction to like people who are able to take what they want or are confident enough to ask for the things that they want without feeling shame around it. Rappers like Megan Thee Stallion, CupcakKe, Shawnna, Lil Kim, Foxy Brown and Gangsta Boo from three six mafia. Music has been really pivotal for me, I think more than anything else that I've read.

Getting older and coming out and realizing that I was queer and meeting a ton of queer people with similar experiences has been really monumental as well. I'm still on the hunt for really good texts about ethical non-monogamy and queerness from a Black feminist lens. I read a little bit of Pleasure Activism but it didn't really satiate me the way that I wanted. It just didn't feel like it was speaking entirely to me. That's something I’m still thinking about and would like to find.

Mare: One last thing, what are some common misconceptions about non-monogamous relationships that you find frustrating?

Lauren: The assumption that there are no rules involved or that you can do whatever you want is always a shock to me. You still have to set specific boundaries with your partner(s) and those boundaries need to be honored. There’s also this idea that people who are in ethical, non monogamous relationships or who are practicing non-monogamy in any way are just cheaters who don't know how to settle down. I feel like that is especially assumed with a queer person who's not a man or monogamous. I've dated a number of men who have been really freaked out by the idea of me being non-monogamous and not only potentially sleeping with other men, but sleeping with or being in a relationship with other people who aren't men. That's been interesting to navigate as well. I love talking to people about what works and what doesn’t work because I have plenty of examples of situations that were not good. There are a lot of ways that non-monogamy challenges systems that we have in place. There's this concept called the Relationship Escalator. In

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the book Off The Relationship Escalator by Amy Gahran, she defines the Relationship Escalator as a common set of societal expectations around intimate relationships. The goal at the top of this escalator is to achieve a permanent monogamous, cohabitating marriage. Most often, starting a family and buying a house is also a part of that goal. In this framework, the partners are expected to stay in this relationship/ familial structure until they die. That's the escalation of what's to come in a relationship and it doesn't have to look like that.

There are so many ways that you can have a relationship and allow it to evolve into something new that isn’t necessarily about getting married or having kids or a nuclear family structure. I think a lot of people use that as a reference to assess relationships or what they should seek in relationships. There's also the idea that if you are dating multiple people or have multiple partners that you're going to have a favorite or love someone more. I love all my friends in very different ways. It's the same way with my romantic partners and people I'm involved with. Some people like to have a hierarchical way of categorizing relationships whether it's having primary partners or secondary partners. That's something I did when I first got started with nonmonogamy, but it never really felt authentic to the way I think about my partners and the people I'm with. Being teachable and willing to listen to people as they share their fears and insecurities is a good practice. I'm not really out here trying to convert people into being nonmonogamous since that’s not everyone's truth. It's really important to find ways to relate to people that honor their authentic truths. I know a lot of people who are curious but don't really have any resources in place. They don't know what to read. They're not really seeing a ton of conversations about this in the way you would with monogamous relationships. So, yeah, I feel like there's a lot of fear, insecurity and uncertainty around how a relationship that falls within that model could work.

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#Trans Day of Visibility

“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” - Audre Lorde

But, let’s talk about visibility/invisibility.

First, visible and invisible to whom?

Being seen and being heard =/= not the same Like looking & listening

What do you see in Trans folk? What do you want to see in Trans folk? What do you expect from Trans folk? I remember days when I felt asymmetric & fragmented, constantly shrinking and bending all of me into a smaller version of myself that people could recognize and accept, just to feel complete or something close to the feeling if I could feel anything at all because it was easier to not feel but I couldn’t live that way too long because there were people who were here before me who lived in their fullness and made this living i live today more possible more sensational and refused to compromise what they deserved my Blackness & Transness & East/West Africanness & First-Generation Americanness & all the other things that i see in myself deserve more than visibility being looking at acknowledged when we’re gone see us love is hear us while we’re here.

CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

Elizabeth Bryant (she/her) is from Saint Peter, Minnesota. Her work is concerned with Blackness in rural and small town spaces in the midwest, physics as a creative metaphor, food and the outdoors. She has studied History, Black Studies and literature, and has worked as a food service cashier, barista, nonprofit manager, nanny, publicist, events programmer, cheesemaker, fundraiser and now, butcher-farmer.

Gabby Coll (she/her) is an arts communicator, curator, collaborator, and product designer. She worked in arts communications and nonprofit leadership for almost a decade in the Twin Cities and is now a product designer based in New York City. In 2019-2020 she collaborated with Adrienne Doyle within the pilot cohort of the Emerging Curators Institute, and in 2020 they co-founded Burn Something Collective.

Genevieve DeLeon (she/they) is an artist, poet, and MFA graduate from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She studies under daykeeper Gina Kanbalam Miranda, learning and honoring Mayan calendrical cycles. Her work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design Main Gallery, DC Artspace, Tessellate Gallery, Forum Gallery, and the Washington Studio School. Her poems and writing have appeared in Mnartists.org, H+N Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Ekphrasis, and Poet Lore. She is currently the Georgette and Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair in the Visual Arts at the University of Hartford.

Adrienne Doyle (she/they) is a zine artist, writer, and curator. Her creative practice examines place, migration, and memory through an interdisciplinary use of Audre Lorde’s concept of biomythography. She is a 2019 Emerging Curators Institute Fellow, a 2021 Minnesota State Arts Board grantee, and a 2022 Creative Economy Fellow with Springboard for the Arts.

Zola Ellen (she/they) is an abolitionist, writer, and visual storyteller whose work is informed by the abundance and sacredness of Black life. Her professional and creative practices align at the earthly requirement to be in better understanding with our histories and our human complexities. She creates to mend generational bloodlines. She is a 2020 Black Futures Lab Public Policy Institute fellow, and a community organizer

Mare Lodu (she/her) is an interdisciplinary South Sudanese artist, writer, and archivist. She received a BA in Art History from the University of Minnesota and is currently a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison iSchool. Her work incorporates historical research, archival practices and image-making to explore and interrogate the legacies of colonialism and global struggles for Black liberation.

Nance Musinguzi (he/they) is a first-generation, non-binary/trans Ugandan/ Liberian-American multidisciplinary storyteller, researcher and artist. He combines storytelling and ethnographic research to document and explore the evolution of the contemporary American experience through a Black Queer Immigrant lens. He has shown work in solo and group exhibitions and curated exhibitions with early-career artists, community organizations and foundations, universities, high schools, and youth-led collectives. He has also self-published 8 photography books, and most recently, The Letter Formally Known As Q: Voices From Minnesota’s Queer Immigrant Community.

Grover Hogan (they/them) is a queer Black and Mexican multimedia artist from Houston, Texas, currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their work focuses on issues of their identity, their performance of social roles, and how they move through hierarchies within a white supremacist culture. Their work is irreverent, accessible, and relatable, especially for those reckoning with their identity. They hold a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Fine Arts Studio with a focus on Drawing and Painting.

Lauren Coleman (she/her) is an independent multidisciplinary artist, dance, maker and graphic designer based in Minneapolis. In her visual and performance work, Coleman explores the complexities and intersections of blackness, queerness, and womanhood through modes of spatiality, desire and belonging. Her work has been featured at the American Swedish Institute, Bryant Lake Bowl and Theater, Bethel University, Walker Art Center, and Soo Visual Arts Center.

Sonitha Tep (she/they) is a Khmer graphic designer, artist and writer. She currently works at Playwrights’ Center as their graphic designer in Minneapolis, MN. Her work recontexualizes elements of design and fine art to create visual storytelling pieces. In her creative practice she examines her Khmer ancestry and other narratives through varying sociolpolitical lenses and mediums that aim to uproot the instutionalized graphic design dominant culture. Sonitha worked alongside Burn Something to design this zine and identity.