A Conversation in Honor of Juneteenth

Golden (they/them) is a black, gender-nonconforming, trans-femme photographer, poet, & community organizer raised in Hampton, VA (Kikotan land), currently residing in Boston, MA (Massachusett people land). They are the author of A Dead Name That Learned How to Live (Game Over Books, 2022) and the photographic self-portraiture series On Learning How to Live, documenting black trans life at the intersections of surviving & living in the United States. Golden’s published & collaborative work can be found on Instagram (@goldenthem_) or on their website goldengoldengolden.com.

Image courtesy of the artist. 

bashezo (ze/zir, they/them) was born and raised in S. Philadelphia, PA (Lenni-Lenape land) and currently lives in W. Medford, MA (Pawtucket land). Ze is a non-binary, transdisciplinary installation and movement performance creative, who blends race and queer theory with African diaspora spiritual traditions and aesthetics. Multi-media materials are aggregated as a means to create immersive ephemeral 3rd spaces that for queer and trans QTBIPoC bodies, narratives, and experiences to explore Blackness, belonging, gender, sexuality, and healing. bashezo also co-founded the UnBound Bodies Collective (UBB). The heart of this collaborative/community building project is to shape and hold generative creative spaces for QTBIPoC. UBB is currently working on a multi-year project called Roots + Futures: We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For * (June Jordan) that artistically celebrates the lives of Queer Trans Black elders and contemporaries while folx are ALIVE and recently designed and installed another large public interactive living altar, Waterways, for QTBIPoC folx in Downtown Crossing as a part of ds4si’s 2021 InPublic event.

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Kamaria Weemz (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, Black, politicized somatic practitioner and movement creative. Their life’s work wades into the depths of Blackness, reveling in liberatory practices that heal across generations–backwards, contemporarily, and into the future. In 2019, they were invited into UnBound Bodies Collective (UBB) – a multidisciplinary arts lab for QTBIPOC creatives in the greater Boston area and beyond. UBB often collaborates with other Boston-based QTBIPoC artists in their world-building practices as a way to extend collective ecosystems of imagination, care, and generative ways of community building. Kamaria gravitates towards aesthetic design, installation, and performance art. They move healing realms into the senses as a practice, so what is often experienced within the body/spirit can be felt, heard, touched, smelled and maybe seen.

Image courtesy of Lauren Miller.

Julissa Emile (they/them) is a twenty-three-year-old transplant and chaos baby from the United States Virgin Islands. Their writing focuses on the intersections of blackness, queerness and "if that were a garden, what kind of magic would grow from it". They served as the FEMS slammaster from 2018-2020, and have been featured in Button Poetry, Teen Vogue, BET, and Buzzfeed.

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Simone John (she/her) is a poet, community archivist, and artist based in Boston, MA. Her debut poetry collection, Testify, was published by Octopus Books in 2017. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College with an emphasis on documentary poetics. In 2020, Simone was awarded a poetry fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. In addition to writing, Simone’s creative practices include co-creating events and exhibits through UnBound Bodies, a multidisciplinary queer Black arts collective; managing Hive Soul Yoga, a POC-centered wellness community; and producing archival audio projects.

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Zenaida Peterson (they/them) is a mystic, an organizer, a gardener, and a Black non-binary poet from the south currently thriving in Boston, Massachusetts. They are the founding director of Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam (FEMS), an all ages radical poetry slam centering marginalized people and celebrating the feminine who is currently focusing on rest. They are the Equity and Empowerment Director of Quaker Voluntary Service. You can find their work at Pizza Pi Press, Button Poetry, and Wusgood Black.

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