Tourmaline
(b. 1983)Drawing her name from the Tourmaline crystal, notable for its powers of protection and grounding, the filmmaker, activist, writer, and photographer makes work rooted in the research and amplification of Black, trans, and queer voices.
Biography
As a child, Tourmaline moved around Boston, where she attended a Black Nationalist church with her family and a Black Nationalist youth program during the week. She quickly noticed the discrepancies between what she was taught in the program versus what she was taught in school.
She also engaged the queer and trans communities in her neighborhood. She spoke with trans sex workers who worked in nearby parks and befriended queer churchgoers. Tourmaline was heavily influenced by her family of activists and organizers and was drawn to abolitionist thinking and socioeconomic justice from an early age. In high school, she started a Black history class, which was then offered as an elective to other students.
The artist moved to New York City in 2002 to attend Columbia University and work as an organizer. In 2006, she received her BA in comparative ethnic studies from Columbia with a concentration in African American studies. She worked at Queers for Economic Justice, where she was an organizer for the Welfare Organizing Project. During her time there, she created a film with her peers that documents the fight for economic and social justice for LGBTQIA+ people, which laid much of the groundwork for the research-intensive practice that prevails in her later films. After her time at Queers for Economic Justice, she worked for Critical Resistance, an organization that seeks to abolish the prison industrial complex in the United States. Soon after, she worked as a membership director at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project from 2010 to 2014.
Although the artist received no formal film training, the artist credits her experience serving as Dee Rees’s assistant on the 2017 film Mudbound as her “film school.” Her activism is embedded in her archival artistic practice. In her video works, the artist has placed herself in dialogue with her Black trans ancestors, such as Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Marsha P. Johnson, and Mary Jones. Her work was presented at the Studio Museum in 2017, and her work was acquired in 2020.
Tourmaline
(b. 1983)Drawing her name from the Tourmaline crystal, notable for its powers of protection and grounding, the filmmaker, activist, writer, and photographer makes work rooted in the research and amplification of Black, trans, and queer voices.
Biography
As a child, Tourmaline moved around Boston, where she attended a Black Nationalist church with her family and a Black Nationalist youth program during the week. She quickly noticed the discrepancies between what she was taught in the program versus what she was taught in school.
She also engaged the queer and trans communities in her neighborhood. She spoke with trans sex workers who worked in nearby parks and befriended queer churchgoers. Tourmaline was heavily influenced by her family of activists and organizers and was drawn to abolitionist thinking and socioeconomic justice from an early age. In high school, she started a Black history class, which was then offered as an elective to other students.
The artist moved to New York City in 2002 to attend Columbia University and work as an organizer. In 2006, she received her BA in comparative ethnic studies from Columbia with a concentration in African American studies. She worked at Queers for Economic Justice, where she was an organizer for the Welfare Organizing Project. During her time there, she created a film with her peers that documents the fight for economic and social justice for LGBTQIA+ people, which laid much of the groundwork for the research-intensive practice that prevails in her later films. After her time at Queers for Economic Justice, she worked for Critical Resistance, an organization that seeks to abolish the prison industrial complex in the United States. Soon after, she worked as a membership director at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project from 2010 to 2014.
Although the artist received no formal film training, the artist credits her experience serving as Dee Rees’s assistant on the 2017 film Mudbound as her “film school.” Her activism is embedded in her archival artistic practice. In her video works, the artist has placed herself in dialogue with her Black trans ancestors, such as Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Marsha P. Johnson, and Mary Jones. Her work was presented at the Studio Museum in 2017, and her work was acquired in 2020.