Bre’Ann White, Deity II (detail), 2015. Inkjet print, 48 x 36 in.
Courtesy of the artist © Bre’Ann White
Toward “Transcendence:” A Symposium on Black Queer Ecstatic Art is a scholarly symposium curated by Dr. Phillip Townsend and organized by Art Galleries at Black Studies.
The symposium expands upon the ideas and themes explored in Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy: 1924-2024.
The symposium will be presented in hybrid format– virtually and in-person at William C. Powers, Jr. Activity Center at UT.
Day one presents keynotes by photographers Lola Flash and Texas Isaiah, whose work is featured in the exhibition Transcendence. Both artists will present on their practices and the role ecstasy plays in their work. A conversation moderated by Dr. Townsend will follow.
Day two brings together seven prominent scholars in Black queer art for presentations of their in-progress essays included in the forthcoming Transcendence catalogue. As the Transcendence exhibition is organized around seven themes – Portraiture, Beyond Figuration, Dance and Movement, Spirituality, Sex and Sensuality, Black Queer Futures, and Altered States – each writer will present on a theme related to their scholarship. These scholarly talks will be organized into two categories: “Transcending Time & Place” in the morning, and “Transcending Form” in the afternoon.
REGISTER for Virtual ATTENDANCE
Register for On-Campus Attendance
Symposium Schedule
Day One:
Thursday February 20, 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Keynote Presentations by exhibiting artists Lola Flash and Texas Isaiah
Moderated conversation between the artists and curator Phillip Townsend
Day Two
Friday February 21, 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Scholars Nessette Falu, Laura Gutierréz, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Amber Jamilla Musser, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, Natalie Willis, and Hershini Young present original research on exhibition themes
Session I: “Transcending Time & Place” 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, “Black Queer Futures”
Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, “Spirituality”
Natalie Willis Whylly, “Altered States”
Lunch provided: 12:40–1:25 p.m.
Session II: “Transcending Form,” 1:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Nessette Falu, “Portraitures”
Amber Jamilla Musser, “Sex and Sensuality”
Laura Gutierréz, “Dance and Movement”
About the Exhibition
Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924–2024 is a multi-venue survey exhibition curated by AGBS Curator Dr. Phillip Townsend. Through 59 artworks in a variety of media, the exhibition highlights visual representations of Black queer ecstasy from the last 100 years that surpass its absence from the historical record. Centering Blackness and queerness allows this exhibition to consider the potential of queer perspectives around the paradoxes of pleasure and pain, excess and lack, and autonomy and dependence. As such, the exhibition is organized around seven themes: Portraiture, Beyond Figuration, Dance and Movement, Spirituality, Sex and Sensuality, Black Queer Futures, and Altered States. Together these themes represent the foundations of queer, and especially Black queer, experiences and offer viewers a space to engage with artwork and ephemera that highlight an ecstatically abundant past and advocate for a more inclusive and equitable future.
This symposium is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art and a grant from The Mellon Foundation’s Affirming Multivocal Humanities initiative, with additional support from the following units at The University of Texas at Austin: College of Liberal Arts, Visual Arts Center, Latino Studies, Barron Ulmer Kidd Centennial Lectureship (Humanities Institute), Department of Sociology, Long Chair Funds (Department of Art and Art History), Department of Anthropology, Department of History, and American Studies.
Nessette Falu
Nessette Falu is a Black queer feminist and cultural anthropologist with sub-disciplinary specializations in medical anthropology, Black queer studies, Black feminist studies, and reproductive justice studies. Falu’s intellectual work analyzes the intersections of anti-Blackness, heteronormativity, medicine, trauma, resistance, and freedom. Falu intervenes, broadly, to understand forms of hidden, silenced power and the abuse of power in gynecology and medicine. Her past clinical practice of seventeen years as a Physician Assistant (neurosurgery, internal medicine, HIV care, hematology/oncology, and pain management) critically informs her research, publications, collaborations, and public phasing, and design work. The convergence of Falu’s clinical expertise with social science, humanistic scholarly endeavors is an invaluable, unique asset for intellectual and public impact into the Austin community as well as with international and transnational far-reaching outcomes. Falu’s research and professional trajectories inform her public engagement and creative work, which is steered toward social justice in medicine and raising public awareness. At UT Austin, Falu has developed Gxnecologx Justice Lab (https://www.gxnecologx.org), a Black feminist laboratory for research and design, publicly launched in December 2023.
Nessette Falu identifies as Black Puerto Rican born and raised in New York City; and also partly raised in Puerto Rico with her grandparents as a child.
Lola Flash
A New Jersey native who is a longtime figure in New York’s downtown scene, Lola Flash is an activist documenting themes around race, age, and gender. Flash was an active member of ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, and was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide.
Flash works primarily in portraiture with both a 4x5 film camera and a digital medium format camera, engaging those who are often deemed invisible. They received their bachelor's degree in photography from Maryland Institute and Master’s from London College of Printing in the UK.
They have been working as a practicing artist and teacher in the US and UK with numerous international exhibitions and commissions over the past several decades, and have work included in important public collections such as MoMA, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the George Eastman Museum. Flash is also a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective and the President on the Queer Art Board.
Flash is a committed artist using photography to provide “new ways of seeing.” Their passion for the medium of photography and its ability to visually allure while initiating change and progress has brought them this far…
Their work welcomes audiences who are willing to not only look but see.
Laura Gutiérrez
Laura Gutiérrez is Associate Professor in Latinx Studies in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and Associate Dean for Community Engagement and Public Practice in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research areas are Latinx and Mexican performance, visual culture, queer studies, and feminisms. Gutiérrez is the author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage (recipient of an MLA book award) and has published on Latinx performance, border art, Mexican video art, and Mexican political cabaret. She was a Scholars Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles during the Fall of 2022 and a UT Provost Author’s Fellow from 2022-23. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Binding Intimacies in Contemporary Queer Latinx Performance and Visual Art. Gutiérrez is on the programming team and serves as Artistic Director of OUTsider Festival in Austin, Texas.
Omi Osun Joni L. Jones
Omi Osun Joni L. Jones is interested in performance, visual art, community-building and the places where these forms meet. Her original performances include sista docta, a critique of academic life, and Searching for Ọ̀ṣun, an ethnographic performance installation around the Divinity of the River. Omi co-founded the ISESE Gallery at the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and launched the Austin Project—a collective of Global Majority women and allies who use art for personal and social transformation. Her dramaturgical work includes August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, Shay Youngblood’s Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery, Sharon Bridgforth’s con flama, as well as Virginia Grise’s Riding the Currents of the Wilding Wind. Her most recent book is Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present Moment. Omi holds a Ph.D. from New York University and an Embodied Social Justice Certificate from Transformative Change, and currently serves on the Advisory Committee of Art Galleries at Black Studies at UT. She has been shaped by Robbie McCauley’s activist art, Laurie Carlos’s insistence on being present, and Barbara Ann Teer’s overt union of art and Spirit. Omi is Professor Emerita of African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, a mother, a Queer wife and a curious sojourner.
Amber Jamilla Musser
Amber Jamilla Musser is a professor of English and Africana studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.
She writes and researches at the intersections of race, sexuality, and aesthetics. In addition to writing art reviews for The Brooklyn Rail, she has published widely in queer studies, black feminism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. She is the author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (NYU Press, 2014), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (NYU Press, 2018), and Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (Duke University Press, 2024). Her collaborative projects include co-editing Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies (NYU Press, 2021) and co-hosting its accompanying podcast Feminist Keywords; special issues of Signs: A Journal of Feminist Theory on "Care and Its Complexities;" ASAP Journal on "Queer Form;" and the series Elements in Feminism and Critical Theory for Cambridge University Press. She was President of ASAP (Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present) from 2022-2023 and co-chaired ASAP-14: Arts of Fugitivity in Seattle in 2023 and ASAP-15: Not a Luxury in New York City in 2024. She is also co-Editor of Social Text.
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley is Professor and Chair of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on queer and feminist, Caribbean and African American performance and literature. Her most recent book, The Color Pynk: Black Femme Art for Survival (University of Texas Press, 2022), explores Black femme aesthetics of resistance in the Trump era. Earlier monographs include Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism (2018); Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders (2018), winner of the 2019 Barbara T. Christian Prize in Caribbean Studies; and Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature (2010). She has published articles in journals including GLQ, Feminist Studies, Yale French Studies, and Small Axe and is a contributor to Ms., TIME, Ebony, The Advocate, and Huffington Post. She is currently at work on a project on Megan Thee Stallion, Monica Roberts, and Houston’s Black queer feminism.
Natalie Willis Whylly
Natalie Willis Whylly (she/they) is a queer curator and cultural worker from Grand Bahama, The Bahamas. After earning a BA (Hons) and MA in Fine Art from York St. John University in the UK, Willis returned home to contribute to the cultural landscape of The Bahamas. Following six years at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, they have worked independently since 2021 as a curator, art consultant, and writer. In 2024, Willis took up the post of Caribbean Editor at Large for Burnaway, an art magazine dedicated to supporting contemporary art and critique from the South and Caribbean.
Willis’ practice centers on the sensitive representation of marginalized communities (including their own), decolonizing art archives, and deepening public understanding and access to Bahamian and Caribbean visual culture.
During their tenure at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Willis played a pivotal role in reshaping perceptions of Caribbean art through an extensive archive of public scholarship. Notable accomplishments include organizing the museum’s first bilingual exhibition with wall texts in English and Haitian Kreyol, curating the first group show celebrating Black women artists of The Bahamas, and co-creating an inter-island traveling exhibition program to better serve the nation’s archipelago.
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley is Professor and Chair of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on queer and feminist, Caribbean and African American performance and literature. Her most recent book, The Color Pynk: Black Femme Art for Survival (University of Texas Press, 2022), explores Black femme aesthetics of resistance in the Trump era. Earlier monographs include Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism (2018); Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders (2018), winner of the 2019 Barbara T. Christian Prize in Caribbean Studies; and Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature (2010). She has published articles in journals including GLQ, Feminist Studies, Yale French Studies, and Small Axe and is a contributor to Ms., TIME, Ebony, The Advocate, and Huffington Post. She is currently at work on a project on Megan Thee Stallion, Monica Roberts, and Houston’s Black queer feminism.
Texas Isaiah Valenzuela
Texas Isaiah Valenzuela is an award-winning first-generation visual narrator born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, who currently resides in Los Angeles, CA, and NYC. He is an autodidact with a giant appetite for traveling, so his process and work aren't tethered to one geographical location.
In 2020, Texas Isaiah became one of the first trans photographers to photograph a Vogue edition cover and a TIME cover. He has worked with Apple, Google, Converse, Dior, Calvin Klein, The New York Times, and LA Times.
He is a 2020-21 artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, a 2020 Clio Awards Silver winner for visual curation on Being Seen Podcast, and a finalist for the 2022 Artadia Los Angeles Award.
Texas Isaiah’s work has been exhibited at SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT (Germany), Aperture Foundation Gallery (NYC), Studio Museum in Harlem, Hammer Museum (LA), and The Kitchen (NYC). His work was part of the touring exhibition The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion, which concluded in 2024. His work is currently exhibited in two touring exhibitions: As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic at Saatchi Gallery in London and The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century at Art Gallery of Ontario
Occuring concurrently with Toward Transcendence is
OUTsider Fest 2025:
five days of monstrous beautiful mischief at The Vortex in Austin.
Outsider’s annual festival and conference unites queer artists, audiences and scholars from around the globe to exchange ideas, ignite conversations, transcend boundaries and experience new pleasures through artistic discovery.
OUTsider is an Austin-based transmedia nonprofit that celebrates the bold originality and creative nonconformity of the LGBTQ+ communities through the presentation of provocative, overlooked and out-of-the-box film, dance, theater, performance art, music, writing and visual art.
