Juliana Huxtable (born December 29, 1987) is an American artist, writer, performer, DJ, and co-founder of the New York-based nightlife project Shock Value. Huxtable has exhibited and performed at a number of venues including Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Project Native Informant,

Artists Space Artists Space is a non-profit art gallery and arts organization first established at 155 Wooster Street in Soho, New York City. Founded in 1972 by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Artist ...

, the New Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Institute of Contemporary Arts. Huxtable's multidisciplinary art practice explores a number of projects, such as the internet, the body, history, and text, often through a process she calls "conditioning." Huxtable is a published author of two books and a member of the New York City-based collective

House of Ladosha House of Ladosha is a New York City-based artistic collective and LGBT rap duo including Antonio Blair ("Dosha Devastation aka La Fem LaDosha") and Adam Radakovich ("Cunty Crawford"). Other members include Neon Christina Ladosha (Christopher Udeme ...

. She is on the roster of the talent agency Discwoman, a New York based collective and talent agency that books DJs for parties and events around the world. She previously lived and worked in New York City, and has been based in Berlin since 2020.

Early life and education

Huxtable was born in Bryan-College Station, Texas. She has described her hometown as a typical "conservative Bible Belt town in Texas." Huxtable's mother, Kassandra, raised Huxtable and her two siblings alone after Huxtable's parents divorced. Huxtable was born intersex and began her transition after college. She notes that struggles with gender conformity and sex identity started earlier in life. Huxtable moved to New York to attend Bard College and graduated in 2010. Huxtable has spoken about her desire to be a painter while growing up and enrolled in several painting classes during college. She abandoned the medium after professors criticized her for her "obsession with" formal technique and identity. In an interview with artist

Lorraine O'Grady Lorraine O'Grady (born September 21, 1934) is an American artist, writer, translator, and critic. Working in conceptual art and performance art that integrates photo and video installation, she explores the cultural construction of identity – pa ...

, Huxtable mentioned studying literature and gender studies.

Emerging in New York

Huxtable moved to New York to work as a legal assistant for the

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

's Racial Justice Program after college. While at the ACLU, Huxtable amassed a significant following on Tumblr, posting long stream-of-consciousness poems and self-portraits that experimented with fashion and

Nuwaubian The Nuwaubian Nation, Nuwaubian movement, or United Nuwaubian Nation () is an American new religious movement founded and led by Dwight York, also known as Malachi Z. York. York began founding several black Muslim groups in New York in 1967. ...

imagery. After leaving her position at the ACLU, Huxtable began DJing. In August of 2013 Huxtable DJ'd at the

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...

's Uptown Fridays party series. The same year Huxtable participated in the

's show ''The'' ''Whole House Eats'' (stylized as ''THE WHOLE HOUSE EATS'') at Superchief Gallery. During her time as a DJ, Huxtable regularly integrated her poetry into DJ mixes. Huxtable's poetry was featured in the song "Blood Oranges" from Le1f's mixtape Tree House as well as the runway soundtrack for the Hood by Air 2014 Fall/Winter fashion show "10,000 Screaming Faggots" by

Total Freedom ''Total Freedom'' is the fifth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards. It was released by Dualtone Records on August 14, 2020. Background and recording In 2014, two years after the success of her album ''Voyageur'', Edwards ...

. Huxtable's interest in fashion led her to model for a number of fashion houses and campaigns. In 2014, she was featured on the fifth anniversary cover of ''C☆NDY'' magazine along with a number of other transgender women – Janet Mock,

Carmen Carrera Carmen Carrera (born April 13, 1985) is an American reality television personality, model, burlesque performer, and actress, known for appearing on the third season of the Logo reality television series ''RuPaul's Drag Race'', as well as its s ...

, Geena Rocero, Isis King, Leyna Ramous, Yasmine Petty, and Laverne Cox. Huxtable has modeled for DKNY, Eckhaus Latta, Chromat, and French fashion house Kenzo. In August 2014, Huxtable performed in the video for the Hercules and Love Affair song "My Offence." The video features excerpts of conversations with figures from New York City's queer nightlife scene such as Honey Dijon. The band's primary member, Andrew Butler, described the song and its video as an examination of his "relationship to taboo words and the use of 'cunt' amongst NYC's gay community to relay flattery, empowerment and strength".

Work

New Museum Triennial and Performa 15 Biennial

In early 2015, Huxtable was selected to present work in the 2015 New Museum Triennial ''Surround Audience,'' curated by

Lauren Cornell Lauren Cornell is an American curator and writer based in New York. Cornell is the Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Chief Curator of the Hessel Museum of Art. Previously, she worked at the Ne ...

and artist

Ryan Trecartin Ryan Trecartin (born 1981) is an American artist and filmmaker currently based in Athens, Ohio. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with a BFA in 2004. Trecartin has since lived and worked in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Ph ...

. Huxtable included two text-based works and two self-portraits, each an inkjet print from the series ''Universal Crop Tops For All The Self-Canonized Saints of Becoming.'' These works, along with a sculpture by fellow Triennial artist Frank Benson that depicted a life-sized Huxtable rendered in iridescent colors, were prominent works in the show. Vogue Writer Mark Guiducci dubbed Huxtable the "Star of the New Museum Triennial". Huxtable premiered on season two of Ovation TV's web-based talk show, '' Touching the Art'', hosted by fellow 2015 Triennial artist

Casey Jane Ellison Casey Jane Ellison (born March 29, 1988) is an American stand-up comedian, writer and multimedia artist. Life Ellison was born and raised in Los Angeles, California "across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits." Her mother is a civil rights attor ...

. Artist

K8 Hardy K8 Hardy (born 1977, Fort Worth, Texas) is an American artist and filmmaker.(2018, March 26). Hardy, K8. ''Benezit Dictionary of Artists.'' Retrieved 14 Dec. 2020, from https://www-oxfordartonline-com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/benezit/view/10.1093/ ...

and New Museum curator Shelley Fox Aarons were also guests in the same episode. Later that year, Huxtable was selected to showcase a new performance piece in the Performa 15 Biennial. The hour-long performance titled, ''There Are Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed,'' was presented at the Museum of Modern Art. It included poetry, audio and voice over, video elements, and live-music with fellow collaborators and explored the complicated relationship between the ephemeral nature of digital information and the drive for historical documentation on the internet. As described by the festival's organizers, Huxtable's performance considered "cyberspace as a twilight zone of precariousness and preservation, traversing closed servers, bounced URLs, and Google cache as human and digital characters".

''Shock Value'', House of Ladosha, and other projects

Huxtable is a founder and DJ for ''Shock Value,'' a weekly New York City-based nightlife collective run by women artists, DJs, writers, and fashion icons. Huxtable is a member of the New York City-based collective

. Members include Cunty Crawford Ladosha (Adam Radakovich), Neon Christina Ladosha, Paws Off Ladosha (Riley Hooker), Magatha Ladosha (Michael Magnan), La Fem Ladosha (Antonio Blair), and YSL Ladosha (Yan Sze Li). In January 2016, House of Ladosha showcased various art projects in ''This Is Your Brain''. In 2017, the collective was selected to participate in the group exhibition ''Trigger: Gender as a Weapon and a Tool'' at the New Museum. They were also featured in Issue 7 of the magazine ''Gayletter''. Huxtable currently sits on the editorial board for Topical Cream, a New York-based platform that supports a community of artists, writers, designers, and technologists through digital publishing and public programming initiatives. Topical Cream was founded in 2013 and its board members include Lyndsy Welgos, Ara Anjargolian, Whitney Mallett, Juliana Huxtable, and Aria Dean. In 2016, Huxtable was a Visiting Artists Program lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Huxtable has participated in multiple panels and lectures, including ''Basquiat and Contemporary Queer Art'' hosted by the

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) b ...

, ''Transgender in the Mainstream'' hosted by

Art Basel Miami Beach Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...

, ''Body Work: Performance and Practice'' hosted by Art Basel and ''Open Score: Generation You'' presented by the New Museum and

Rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...

. Later that year, Huxtable headlined the opening night performance of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art Festival in Portland, Oregon.

Solo exhibitions

Huxtable's first solo exhibition, ''A Split During Laughter at the Rally'', opened at '' Reena Spaulings'' in New York City in May 2017. The exhibition featured several posters with DIY-inspired magnets, a video piece featuring members from

, and a flow chart. The show explored "the aesthetics of conspiracy and American paranoia" through various modes of resistance, alienation, and irony. Huxtable notes that the posters in the exhibition were formally inspired by American artist Emory Douglas. Huxtable's second solo exhibition, ''Juliana Huxtable'', opened at ''Project Native Informant'' in London, England in October 2017. The exhibition featured three photographs of a black subject with various (often conflicting) tattoos, four sculptural paintings made of military-style clothing, and ten pamphlet-sized posters recounting, "a brawl between Antifa leftist skinheads and Nazi skinheads outside of a Fred Perry sample sale in Paris". The show continues Huxtable's exploration into conspiracy theories and paranoia, subcultures, and identity but on a more humorous note. Fashion also plays a major role throughout Huxtable's practice as this show highlights. Huxtable has referenced Jose Esteban-Muñoz's "Disidentification" as a major inspiration.

Books

Huxtable has produced two books and contributed to a number of chapbooks and artist's writing anthologies. Her first book, ''Mucus in My Pineal Gland,'' was published in 2017 by Capricious. The book is a collection of previously performed poems, like ''UNTITLED (FOR STEWART)'' and ''THERE ARE CERTAIN FACTS THAT CANNOT BE DISPUTED,'' as well as a number of new poems. The book is written in her typical all-caps style and blue font. Huxtable's second book, ''Life'', was co-written with artist Hannah Black. The novel is a work of science-fiction and is written in both English and German. It was released in 2017 by König.

Music

Huxtable has collaborated with renowned producer

SOPHIE Sophie is a version of the female given name Sophia, meaning "wise". People with the name Born in the Middle Ages * Sophie, Countess of Bar (c. 1004 or 1018–1093), sovereign Countess of Bar and lady of Mousson * Sophie of Thuringia, Duchess o ...

, forming a music duo called Analemma. The duo produced two tracks on ''Locus Error'', an

acid techno Acid techno, sometimes known generally as "acid", is a genre of techno that was derived from acid house and developed in Europe in the late 1980s to early 1990s. It saw younger artists apply the "squelching" synthesizer sound of Chicago acid hou ...

concept album released through Nina Kraviz's Trip Records. Huxtable also contributed vocals to one of the two tracks, "Plunging Asymptote".

Awards

Huxtable received a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship.

Themes

Style Huxtable's practice is interdisciplinary by nature and thus explores a range of topics. Earlier works explore ideas of identity, the body, and text, with influences from Afrofuturism and science fiction. Huxtable's more recent works explore language, conspiracy theories, fashion (

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

costumes, military surplus, punk aesthetics, etc.), and various countercultures. Huxtable's visual practice includes, "examining and remixing enduring imagery that, in her observations, retain 'symbolic power.'" Steven Zultanski writes of Huxtable's ''Mucus in My Pineal Gland'', "...doesn't idealize genrelessness, it moves between genres, unmooring moments of personal experience and speculative thought from literary conventions in order to situate them in the world outside of the text, while reflecting on and enjoying those conventions." Huxtable often, "references her use of digital spaces, including Tumblr," chat rooms, social media, online sexual

subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, poli ...

s, Encarta, and Afripedia as well as childhood, fashion, consumer culture, and the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were e ...

. Influences Huxtable has noted a range of influences including writers Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany, theorists

Luce Irigaray Luce Irigaray (born 3 May 1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examined the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. Irigaray's first and most well know ...

and Jose Esteban-Muñoz, and the visual aesthetics of video director Hype Williams, bands TLC and Blaque, and singer

Aaliyah Aaliyah Dana Haughton (; January 16, 1979 – August 25, 2001) was an American singer and actress. She has been credited for helping to redefine contemporary R&B, pop and hip hop, earning her the nicknames the "Princess of R&B" and " ...

. Nuwaubian culture has often been a major source of inspiration for her as well. Huxtable's ''Mucus in My Pineal Gland'' is dedicated to " Herculine, Borges, LaDosha, and Pickaninny Punks."

Exhibitions and performances

Solo exhibitions *''INTERFERTILITY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: SNATCH THE CALF BACK,'' Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, NY, 2019 *''Juliana Huxtable'', Project Native Informant, London, England, 2017 * ''A Split During Laughter at the Rally'', Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, NY, 2017 Group exhibitions * ''Dirge'', JTT, New York, NY, 2017 * ''Perverts,'' Cell Project Space, London, 2017 * ''Time-Based Art Festival 2016'', Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR, 2016 * ''Seduction of a Cyborg'', Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA, 2016 * ''DISSENT: what they fear is the light'', Curated by Shoghig Halajian and Thomas Lawson, Los Angeles, CA, 2016 * ''Bring Your Own Body: transgender between archives and aesthetics,'' 41 Cooper Gallery,

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

, New York City, New York, 2015 * ''2015 Triennial: Surround Audience'', New Museum, New York, NY, 2015 Selected online exhibitions * ''New Black Portraiture'', Curated by Aria Dean, Rhizome.org * Collection Online at

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

. Performances * ''Stewart Uoo presents It's Get Better V'', Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England, 2017 * ''Bring Your Own Body'', Organized by Jeanne Vaccaro with Stamatina Gregory, 41 Cooper Gallery, New York, NY, 2015 * ''Step and Repeat'', Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, 2015 * ''There Are Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed'', Performa 15 Biennial co-commissioned by Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2015 * ''Leigha Mason & Casey Jane Ellison present Inner Space'', MoMA PS1, Queens, NY, 2014 * ''1NVERS1ONS'', in collaboration with Nick Mauss, Kim Gordon, Juliana Huxtable, Northern Ballet, and National Youth Ballet of Great Britain, Frieze Projects, London, England, 2014 * ''Stewart Uoo presents It's Get Better II'', Artists Space, New York, NY, 2014 * ''Take Ecstasy with Me'', Organized by Alexandro Segade (of My Barbarian) & Miguel Gutierrez, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 2014 * ''Looking Back: The Eighth White Columns Annual – Selected by Pati Hertling'', White Columns, New York, NY, 2014 * ''Stewart Uoo presents It's Get Better,'' Artists Space, New York, NY, 2013

Discography

* "Lionsong" ( Bjork remix, 2015, One Little Indian Records) (Lionsong included the remix by Juliana Huxtable.) *Black History Month in 3D Mix with Dedekind Cut fka Lee Bannon 2016

Bibliography

* ''Life: a novel'', co-written with Hannah Black (König, 2017).

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...

br>988257749
* ''Mucus in My Pineal Gland'' (Capricious and Wonder, 2017).

br>987796847
* ''Social medium: artists writing 2000–2015'' (Paper Monument, 2016).

br>957598488
* ''Future Perfect'', edited by Andrew Durbin (BGSQD, 2014).

br>876708570
* ''The Animated Reader: Poetry of 'Surround Audience (New York: New Museum: in association with

McNally Jackson McNally Jackson Books is an independent bookstore based in New York, New York owned and operated by Sarah McNally, a former editor at Basic Books and the child of Holly and Paul McNally, the founders of the Canadian McNally Robinson Booksellers ...

, 2015).

br>949731062
* '' New Art Dealers Alliance Contemporary Poetry Zine,'' curated by Sam Gordon (Brooklyn: Sam Gordon, 2013)

br>892560607

References

External links

* * * *
There Are Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed presented by Performa 15 and MoMAIn Visible Architectures: Three Evenings of Performative Poetry Readings presented by Artists SpaceStewart Uoo presents It's Get Better II hosted at Artists Space
{{DEFAULTSORT:Huxtable, Juliana 1987 births Living people Bard College alumni American contemporary artists Intersex women People from Houston American LGBT artists Transgender artists LGBT DJs Transgender musicians Transgender women musicians Transgender writers LGBT people from Texas LGBT people from New York (state) LGBT African Americans