Take Back the Night Keynote: Tourmaline

Tourmaline is an artist, archivist, activist and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. She has received widespread recognition for the impact of her work, including being named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

Building upon her long-standing experience as a community organizer, her research mines archival sources, tracing historical lineages of marginalized and excluded communities. By centering and inscribing black, brown, trans, and queer historical figures and narratives, she directly challenges dominant cultural histories and storytelling. Her work honors and links antecedents of resistance with current possibilities for liberation, and offers models in which to broadly imagine and thrive within self-actualization. 

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and the Tate, London.She has been included in many exhibitions and screenings, including The New Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others, and has been featured in numerous publications, including Artforum, Frieze, The New York Times, The New Yorker, ArtNews, and Vogue. This year she opened her first solo gallery exhibition of films and self-portrait photographs entitled Pleasure Garden at Chapter NY, which was met with critical acclaim. 

Click Here to Learn More about Tourmaline