REGISTER: https://cglink.me/2eo/r1932988

---

About the talk:
This webinar talk explores how working class aesthetics of excess are activated as a medium for performances of queer and femme of color pleasure and community. I explore the work of artist Joel Gaítan, activist, healer, and advice columnist Maria Pero No Santa (Maria Saldana), rapper and reggaetonera LaGoony Chonga, and drag performers Juliesy in Bed and Karla Croqueta.
 
About the speaker:
Jillian Hernandez studies the autonomous aesthetics and sexualities of Black and Latinx people. Her scholarship crosses the fields of art history, performance, gender, ethnic, Latinx, and Black studies, and is informed by her work as a community arts educator, curator, and cultural producer. Her book Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodimentpublished by Duke University Press, traces how the body practices and art making of Black and Latinx women and girls are intertwined, and how their creative work complicates conventional notions of cultural value and sexual respectability. She is an Associate Professor in the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research at the University of Florida and is currently organizing an exhibition featuring the work of Pamela Council, Yvette Mayorga, and Kenya (Robinson) for the Flaten Art Museum. Her work has appeared in Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist TheoryAmerican Quarterly, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies, among other venues. Her scholarship is based on and inspired by over a decade of community arts work with Black and Latinx girls in Miami, Florida through the Women on the Rise! program she established at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami in addition to her practice as an artist and curator.