TextaQueen.

A Thousand Words (working title) is TextaQueen’s new drawing project.

TextaQueen is seeking queer and trans people of colour poets, spoken word artists, and writers with a performative character for their new drawing series of ‘poem portraits’.

The portrait will feature you in a scenario metaphorically or ‘literally’ relevant to your chosen featured words. Your words and picture will probably be exploring the intersections of race, sexuality, gender and other aspects of your identities and experiences. Your words might be autobiographical or fictional, straight up or fantastical, brief quotes or extended ramble, it’s up to you, and Texta to make it work!

Texta’s creative process is a collaborative and intimate one. Together you’ll choose props, poses, backgrounds (real or fictional) and ways to incorporate your text into your chosen scenario. You’ll need to be available for the initial drawing session of 1 to 3 hours and have a few photos taken for reference sometime between now and end of June. The drawing session must be done live in the Bay area at your home or Texta’s in Oakland. Texta will use these initial drawings to create the final design (with your input), which will be made into a 38 x 50 inch felt-tip marker portrait to be exhibited in 2013 in Sydney, Australia (and hopefully the Bay!). You’ll be able to use the image for your own purposes, and it will be reproduced with your permission, likely as posters or in publications.

Seeking between 8 and 12 different people for portrait planning, most of which will become poem portraits. Please email Texta with possible concepts / some of your writing / inks to your writing.

Opening next week, I’m in this group show at Blak Dot with a portrait of Crystal McKinnon. 

as part of Midsumma, Blak Dot Gallery presents

They’re a Queer Mob

A vision of queer culture from non-western perspectives. A mob of artists with cultural roots in Indigenous Australia, the Pacific, Africa, and India offer their alternative visual experiences

Featuring Jules Renton, Renuka Rajiv, Meera Sethi, Arlene TextaQueen, Kamahi Jordan King, Peter Waples-Crowe, Cecilia Kavara, Kimba Thompson, Salote Tawale, Susan Forrester and Jacob Tologata

Opening night will be a party with various performers scheduled to entertain all evening.

The exhibition features an informal discussion on GLBQT diversity in Indigenous cultures. With speakers covering such topics as the third gender in Indigenous cultures such as faafafine (Samoa), fakaleiti (Tonga), rae rae (Tahiti Nui) and sistagirls (Indigenous Australia). Also to be covered is the continuum of specific Indigenous sexualities which have become distinct parts of Western GLBQT minority culture.

opening Thurs 19th January from 6pm

Blak Dot Gallery 

413 Lygon St, Brunswick East

19 January - 5 February

Thu - Sun 12-5pm

www.blakdot.com.au

http://www.facebook.com/events/214874975265846/

A warm thanks to everyone who attended the opening of We Don’t Need Another Hero at Gallerysmith on Friday 21st October and made it such a magical eve. It was an inspiring night for me, to be part of this collaborative expression of what aims to be creative resistance.

A big thanks to Gary Foley for opening the show with a flattering and otherwise rousing speech that furthered this feeling I’ve been having that we are in an exciting time of change. He made much reference to a poem I recently wrote and performed as one of the guests at his Melbourne Festival show (soon to be at Sydney Festival) that I didn’t further talk about in my speech. It is relevant to the show in that it deals with being defined by physicality, specifically being racialised. So for anyone who was there and curious, you can read it on my harshbrowns blog.

I’m so honoured that two of the members of Ladies of Colour Agency, Loretta Mui and Raina Petersen performed in front of their portrait “Exotic Escape”.  Their spoken word was incredible and Raina followed her pieces with a Bollywood reclamation dance (especially choreographed for me!!!) that blew everyone away. Their portrait sold immediately after, with others queueing behind to purchase it too! 

The series of posters were hot sellers too. All the profits are towards new QPOCalypse poster collective to print and distribute more people-of-colour-focused posters for the street and beyond so expect to see more POC presence on walls inside and out and about in Melbourne! If you’re part of a people-of-colour focused collective or organisation and want a free copy (or more) of the series for a space, or bulk copies at cost please let me know.

More photos of the evening are up on Gary Foley’s website here and stay tuned here for more too.

If you’re in Melbourne, the show runs until November 5th at Gallerysmith.

Thanks for the warm and wonderful feedback to the work, to all the subjects who collaborated to make the work, Caleb Latreille for his research and art assistance, and other friends and my family who have been inspiration and support in the emotional and creative process along the way!

Gary Foley and TextaQueen in front of his portrait, “Creature from the Black Platoon”. photo by Marita Smith. My outfit is by the lovely Emily Hasselhoof.

The Ladies of Colour Agency’s “Exotic Escape”

felt-tips on paper, 127 x 97cm, 2011

(Another pic from my upcoming exhibition in Melbourne)

My new drawing series, We Don’t Need Another Hero, features people of colour as outlaws of their post-apocalypse, drawn as if posters for fictional movies.

As an artist of colour, my racialised existence has inherently informed my work, but this new series explicitly investigates racial politics. I’ve sought out peers from various sociocultural and racial backgrounds to propose characters, costumes, and fictional surrounds to represent themselves as survivors of their armageddon. The post-apocalyptic genre seems a relevant forum to discuss Indigenous and people of colour immigrant experiences living in settler colonial realities.

Subjects include contemporary Indigenous artist Tony Albert in “Yesterday When The War Began’, Samoan circus and burlesque performer Fez Faanana in “Attack of the Under Water Woman”, Indigenous activist Robbie Thorpe in “Armageddon Out of Here”, Papua New Guinean performance artist Pandie Panther in “Uritai Headhunter: Warrior of Paradise”, Colombian hip hop emcee Ben Beracasa aka Clandestine Voice in “When the South Rises” and Indigenous historian and activist Gary Foley in “Creature from the Black Platoon”.

Gallerysmith will host We Don’t Need Another Hero from 13th October 2011. Opening event on Friday 21st October 6-8pm, to be opened by Gary Foley and featuring performance by the Ladies of Colour Agency and tunes by DJ Pandie Panther.

Some preview pics..

Pandie Panther “Uritai Headhunter: Warrior of Paradise”

felt-tips on paper, 127 x 97cm, 2011

Third World Terrorist in “When the South Rises”

felt-tips on paper, 127 x 97cm, 2011

(portrait subject Ben Beracasa aka Clandestine Voice)

“Creature from the Black Platoon” starring Gary Foley

felt-tips on paper, 97 x 127cm, 2011

Tony Albert stars in “Yesterday When the War Began”

felt-tips on paper, 127 x 97cm, 2011

Robbie Thorpe as Djuran Bunjileenee “Armageddon Outta Here”

felt-tips on paper, 127 x 97cm, 2011

photography by the lovely John Brash @ fotograffiti