Black Queer Diaspora in the Netherlands - by Dustin Thierry and Wigbertson Julian Isenia

What does it mean to be queer and black in the Netherlands? And how about the ‘former’ Dutch colonies? Moreover, in what ways do black lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgenders give meaning to their sexual and gender identity in terms of style, language, dance or in other cultural practices? The project by Dustin Thierry and Wigbertson Julian Isenia explores the answers to these questions. The exhibition of this project takes place in the People’s Parliament of Rojava in the Van Abbemuseum.

The project

Throughout this long-term project, photographer Dustin Thierry and cultural anthropologist Wigbertson Julian Isenia aim to build a living archive of feelings, gender expressions, and sexual identities of the different black queer subcultures in the Netherlands and the ‘former’ Dutch colonies.

This first fragmentary and ongoing sketch of two of these subcultures aims to show the vitality and longevity of the black queer community. Declining to put these subjects on a pedestal, idolizing them and denying their flaws, they seek to explore - as professor Marlon M. Bailey argues - how gender expressions and self-identification can "create ways to survive an often dangerously homophobic, transphobic and femmephobic public sphere."

Many of the portraits depict active participants of the ballroom culture, which is a culture that actively resists the dominating cultural norms of society and provides a place, albeit temporarily, to question conventional heteronormative gender roles and identities.