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ARTIST STATEMENT
Scenes of beauty, life, and love in the midst of unfreedom are the inspiration behind the artist Tourmaline’s Pleasure Gardening walking tour. Organized on the occasion of the 2021 celebration of Juneteenth, the holiday that marks the emancipation of enslaved Black people in the United States, this audio tour of Manhattan synthesizes real spaces where people imagined and then practiced versions of freedom during slavery and other forms of involuntary servitude.
BIO
Tourmaline (b. 1983, Roxbury, Massachusetts) lives and works in New York, NY. As an artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist, her practice highlights the experiences of Black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world. Her films and photographs rewrite mainstream narratives and cultural histories to initiate a paradigm shift and imagine a more pleasure-filled future. Tourmaline’s practice invites us to fundamentally reshape our beliefs about what is possible. She received her BA from Columbia University in 2006. Tourmaline had her first solo exhibition at Chapter NY, New York, in 2020. Her work was included in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice.
Tourmaline’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, AUS; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Tate, London, GBR; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
Her work is currently on view in Artist and Society at Tate Modern, London; Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and will be included in Like Magic at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, opening Fall 2023.