Transformer proudly presents Queer Threads: CURIOUS SPACES – an exhibition collaboration exploring how artists are remixing fiber and textile traditions to explore contemporary LGBTQ+ identities and ideas.

Organized by Transformer and Queer Threads curator John Chaich, Queer Threads: CURIOUS SPACES features solo artist installations by emerging queer artists at Transformer and The Corner at Whitman-Walker. Additional online programming is presented in partnership with guest artists, The George Washington University Museum & The Textile Museum, and American University’s Fine Art Department & The American University Museum. Queer Threads: CURIOUS SPACES is supported in part by an award Transformer received from The National Endowment for the Arts.

André Terrel Jackson
Crowns
September 26 – October 24, 2020
The Corner at Whitman-Walker
Community Window at 1377 R Street, NW

Crowns celebrates Black, female-identified cultural icons as source of inspiration and identification for femme-presenting, BIPOC queer communities. Mx. Jackson has created a royal court of crowns fit for queens in a triptych of hand-crochets headpieces inspired by Nina Simone, Venus and Serena Williams, and Alice Walker and influenced by the elaborate church hats and decorative hairstyles they grew up idolizing. The artist transforms hardware into jewelry and rope into yarn to create the headpieces’ flowing and undulating forms recalling braids, plaits, twists, and beads. The headpieces serve as both art objects and functional fashion, as seen in the nearly life-sized self-portrait also on view. Through the texture of the fibers and confidence of the model, the portrait demands visibility for the Black, queer body. Fittingly displayed within walking distance from the National Archives for Black Women’s History at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House in DC, this installation celebrates Black creativity, femme energy, gender nonconformity, and body positivity.