Documenting Kiki Family: The Explosion of Ballroom
Panel Discussion featuring Twiggy Pucci Garçon, Sara Jordenö, and Christopher Udemezue
Thursday, April 28, 2022
6-8pm EST
RSVP Here
Still from Kiki. Courtesy of Sara Jordenö.
This discussion will address the task of actively forming community, centering on the 2016 documentary Kiki that introduced a new generation to Ballroom culture, the queer families that formed it, and those formed through it. Panelists include filmmaker and visual artist Sara Jordenö; non-binary healer and ballroom participant Twiggy Pucci Garçon; and artist and activist Christopher Udemezue.
This conversation was originally scheduled alongside our exhibition Kindred Solidarities but was postponed due to Covid-19. We’re excited to safely host this event now at The 8th Floor, moderated by George Bolster and Anjuli Nanda Diamond, curators of Kindred Solidarities and our current exhibition Articulating Activism. Please find our current Covid-19 policy, accessibility info, and more details on visiting here.
Read a text transcription of the conversation here. View an Instagram Live recording of the event here.
Participant Biographies:
Twiggy Pucci Garçon has collaborated with artists, filmmakers, academics and policymakers to increase visibility queer and trans people of color in both creative and sociopolitical spaces. In their current role as Chief Program Officer at the True Colors United, Twiggy leads the programmatic strategy and oversight, aimed at not only elevating youth voices but also creating space for partnerships with young adults to lead the movement to end youth homelessness. Twiggy co-wrote the Sundance-selected documentary KIKI, sits on the Board of Directors for Doc Society, and served as a consultant and runway choreographer on FX series, POSE, by Ryan Murphy and Steven Canals. In her work as a creative director, event producer, and culture curator, she’s collaborated with the likes of entities and brands like Coach, FX, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The MET), GLAAD, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Reebok, HighSnobiety and more and been featured in the New York Times, Billboard, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, OUT, PAPER Magazine, NY Mag, The Huffington Post, and The Advocate among others. Her mission is to elevate the authentic representation of the House|Ballroom Community worldwide.
Sara Jordenö is a filmmaker, visual artist, researcher and Assistant Professor of Film & Video at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Their practice resides in the intersection of art, activism, visual sociology and documentary cinema. Jordenö’s work often concerns advanced marginality, social movements and the production of space. Jordenö directed the documentary feature film KIKI about a youth-led social movement for LGBTQIA youth of color in NYC. This film was the product of a close collaboration and was written together with community leader Twiggy Pucci Garcon. KIKI premiered in the US Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, has been shown in over 200 film festivals around the world, had theatrical releases in Sweden, the US and the UK, and has been broadcast in several territories. Jordenö collaborated with Twiggy Pucci Garcon on the community-public art projects THE REINCARNATION OF ROCKLAND PALACE (2012) and PASSE- PRESENT- FUTUR (2020). Working in a close collaboration with sociologist and criminologist A Horning-Ruf, Jordenö has for 10 years conducted fieldwork on sex work, trafficking and forced migration. Ruf and Jordenö are the founders of FRINGE FIELD COLLECTIVE, a platform and network for researchers, advocates and cultural producers. Jordenö’s work has been commissioned by, among others, the Public Art Agency in Sweden, the Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Printed Matter and The Berlin Biennial. They have been written about in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the LA Times and many other publications and their work has been cited in many academic papers. Their films and video installations have been shown internationally at venues such as Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Bildmuseet, Umeå, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Kitchen and MoMA PS1 in NYC. Jordenö is the recipient of numerous awards such as an Art Matters Award (2012) the Teddy Award for Best Documentary Film at the Berlin International Film Festival (2016), the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights at Full Frame Documentary Festival (2016) and the Edstrandska Stiftelsens Art Award (2019). Jordenö was a nominee for the 2017 Film Independent Spirit Truer Than Fiction Award, and was named by Variety as one of "Ten Filmmakers to Watch."
Born in Long Island, NY, Christopher Udemezue has shown at a variety of galleries and museums, including the New Museum, Queens Museum of Art, PS1 MoMa, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Mercer Union, Recess Gallery and Anat Ebgi Gallery. Udemezue utilizes his Jamaican heritage, the complexities of desire for connection, healing through personal mythology and ancestry as a primary source for his work. As the founder of the platforms RAGGA NYC & CONNEK JA, he completed a residency with the New Museum "All The Threatened and Delicious Things Joining One Another" in June 2017. In 2018 Udemezue was on show in the New Museum’s “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” 40 year anniversary show and a part of the chosen artists in The Shed's Open Call grant program/ group show in 2019. In 2021 Chris was elected to be Co-Chair of the board at Recess Gallery, Brooklyn NY and had a solo show at Anat Ebgi Gallery in Los Angeles, California.