Themes, Findings, and Results
What did what did we learn?
Feeling free, full, and liberated is the #1 priority for Black Creatives. Black Creatives understand liberation holistically, fusing together their experiences of identity, wellness, and creativity and placing a strong emphasis on Black Wellness as an avenue to freedom.
Research Questions
01
Identity
What is the significance of the intersection between Blackness & Queerness? How can Black Wellness be understood at this intersection?
02
Wellness & Creativity
How do Black Creatives use creative mediums to support their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing?
03
Liberation
In what ways are art, creation, and collective wellbeing connected to liberation?
RQ1: Identity
How do Black Creatives (BCs) understand Blackness?
How do BCs understand Queerness?
What does this tell us about Black Wellness?
BCs understood Blackness as...
BCs understood Queerness as...
-
foundational to existence
-
a mode of resistance
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as a result of pain, grief, otherness​
-
-
joy, play, magic, uniqueness
-
community
​
others:
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spirituality & ancestral connections
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diverse across the Diaspora
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foundational & natural
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a mode of subversion
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as a result of pain, grief, otherness​
-
-
joy, play, magic, uniqueness
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community
​
others:
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changing with time
Blackness & Queerness are inherently connected. For BCs, there is not one without the other.
"I do think that my Blackness is inherently Queer....It feels so inherent to me – being this Black person that is very visibly Black, very visibly Queer, very visibly Trans and just existing."
- Loveis Wise
"In terms of the intersectionality of [neurodivergence] and Blackness, it's the feeling of constantly looking from the outside of this Western dominant culture...we're always on the fringe or othered. It's this liminal space that you're absolutely towing between multiple worlds and don't quite fit into one. You're having to carve spaces or seek out people to feel like you belong."
- Danaé Wellington
"Blackness is inherently Queer...the notion of our raced bodies were created to be at odds with the rest of humanity for the purposes of exploitation and extraction...that we can find liberation in seeing our Blackness as a tool for waywardness, the same way we do with Queerness."
- J Wortham
"My Queerness is both my lifeboat and my oasis...like softness and armor. If it had not been for embracing my Queerness, I don't know if I would embrace my art or myself. I couldn't live that life."
- Rawiyah Tariq
"[Blackness is] everything to me. It's history, its strength, its creativity, its swag, its culture. It's just unending and my Queerness relates to that because it's one in the same. The uniqueness, the creativity, the making...that we're not victims, they were actually heroes. How we've overcome so much and still, we choose joy choose love, uplifting each other."
- Christian Dante White
BCs carry their identities into Black Wellness, approaching it as a joyful avenue to feed all parts of ourselves when the world around us will not .
RQ2: Wellness & Creativity
How do BCs understand Wellness?
What role does creativity play?
BCs understand wellness as a natural, human right. It is a vast and ongoing process of engaging with the things that makes us feel great.
Cornerstones to Wellness
What does wellness mean to you?
When do you feel at your best?
"Wellness to me is just the state of being. We live in a society that profits off of us not being well, not feeling safe, not being comfortable. But it's our birthright as humans to access pleasure and wellness and a sense of safety."
- Loveis Wise
creative outlets
said by all creatives
healthy relationships
with selves
{
community
rest & relaxation
said by some creatives
spirituality & ancestral connections
{
joy
feeling at ease
being in nature
{
said by a few creatives
Hindrances to Wellness
What hinders your wellness?
Effects of
Systemic Oppression
Capitalism
lack of rest & relaxation
grind culture
overwork
pressure to produce
White Supremacy
whiteness as
default
unsafe spaces for Black Queer bodies
barriers to
basic needs
"Wellness without capitalism...How many times a day can I spend just remembering that I'm breathing and alive? Going outside, being near plants and flowers, talking to my friends, talking about what is happening in my body, writing, cooking – so many different tools have helped on my journey."
- Loveis Wise
"What is hindering me is capitalism, colonialism, systemic oppression...visuals of excellence that are the approximation of whiteness. I could only be successful if I met these criteria that were never made for me. For me to be successful according to other people's terms, I have to sacrifice large pieces of myself and take away from my wholeness."
- Rawiyah Tariq
Other Responses
big life changes & traumas
self-doubt, insecurity &
negative self talk
absence of
community
Creativity & Wellness
What role do creative outlets play?
How does it feel to create?
BCs see creative expression as a crucial form of wellness. Creating allows them to enter a space that is soul-filling, healing, and powerful.
creating as healing & soul-filling
"It's very trancey. I can feel the warmth in my fingers. I can feel the butterflies in my stomach. It feels good to the soul and spirit. It feels like a pouring out – being rooted in that present moment, not by choice, you become the vessel for whatever wants to occupy you and express itself."
- Danaé Wellington
"It's like this dance that just takes over and I just surrender to the process and I go with my gut and heart and all the years of experience that I have come into play."
- Christian Dante White
"I like feeling like my brain is tired at the end of creating…It's a really cathartic process. I do LOVE the sensation of like getting my hands messy and putting in my all with how I'm creating things."
- Jhanique Lovejoy
"It feels very meditative. It feels like you're in a portal and sometimes you don't know where you're going."
- Loveis Wise
creating as an outlet to process life
"I feel that everything I create is about my experience as a Black Queer man. To help me understand the experience...because no one else can tell our stories but us."
- Christian Dante White
"I make a lot of art about what I'm going through….trying to cope with the difficult parts about being Black and Queer and make art about my relationship where I don't have to be scared...because it's for me as well.
- Jhanique Lovejoy
"I make work for people who want to play. I make work for people who want to connect with their spirits and hearts. I want to make work as medicine for joy and feeling playfulness – as a space where people like us can feel safe and seen and reflected in their joy."
- Loveis Wise
"For me, weaving is a way of learning about how to work with tension both on the loom and off the loom. Tension doesn't scare me. I understand that tension can be a creative material. Maybe it's even a necessity for something to happen here. I think that's a sensibility that weaving teaches me."
- Indira Allegra
RQ3: Liberation
At the end of each interview, I asked BCs to synthesize their thoughts on identity, wellness, and creativity for my final question:​
When are you free?
divesting from systemic oppressions & dreaming of new realities
existing as our full selves
in community & solidarity
in art & nature
"That's my future vision – how we can divest from these systems that are crumbling and create new ones. No one's gonna do that for us but us."
- Loveis Wise
"It means freedom. It is a distant horizon, a vision of a future where Black people have access to stable housing, abundant and healthful food choices, safety, resources for care and community. "
- J Wortham
"Some people would see liberation as a seat at the table. I feel liberated when we burn that bitch to the ground and build a new way of doing things with the most marginalized people at the front. "
- Rawiyah Tariq
"[Existing without] feeling like we have to become something else to feel at home because who you are isn't worthy enough...be your full self, even if that doesn't fit within the paradigms that this current society has chalked up as acceptable. "
- Danaé Wellington
"I use they/them pronouns...as an alliance with all the versions of me. You say they and all the elements – the earth that is my body, the water that is my blood, the air that is my breath, and the fire that is my spirit – comes to the fore. It's a way of actually addressing me properly."
- Indira Allegra
"Being able to exist and not have to shrink or hide all of me. "
- Lawrence Lindell
"I didn't get fucked up in a vacuum. So I can't fix it in a vacuum. I believe Black Wellness is in community. Those communities get to be curated experiences...having spaces where Black Queer folks can have their own space. Having space with Black folk who are disabled – looking across from each other equally."
- Rawiyah Tariq
"Nature speaks, it's constantly communicating to us. I think being able to be still enough to go out and put your feet on the grass or being able to sit by the water or sit by a fire is important as well. To coexist with the earth brings us into a different kind of liberation that allows us to appreciate each other and every living thing around us."
- Danaé Wellington
"As a Black Queer person, I feel very larger than life. I feel huge sometimes. I'm holding this feeling and that feeling and everything all at the same time. I think I see a vision for my liberation that celebrates, welcomes, and treats how we feel as information that we should consider."
- Whitney Grinnage-Cassidy