SWAMP PRIESTEXX
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
SWAMP PRIESTEXX (they/them) is an anti-disciplinary artist, scholar, and Femme Thug Daddy from Sunflower, Mississippi who is most concerned with building utopias for Black, trans, and gender variant communities across the globe through installation art, performance, scholarship, and sounds. SWAMP chooses the mainstream and kiki ballroom scene as their place of refuge, spiritual freedom, and artistic expression. They are an active member of the Iconic International House of Ninja performing under the moniker Bijoux Ninja as well as a member of the Kiki House of Blyndex based in Sao Paulo, Brasil. Their music was recently featured at the Seattle Art Museum's Legendary Children annual event, and SWAMP is currently working on a solo album to be released in 2021.
As a student of sound, they are committed to using sound as a method for activating sacred celebratory space and for translating their embodied narratives through curated music. Their music selections are inspired by some of the pioneers of house music and of ghetto techno hailing from their hometown, Chicago. SWAMP chooses the mainstream and kiki ballroom scene as their place of refuge, spiritual freedom, and artistic expression. They were recently an artist in residence at A Studio in the Woods in New Orleans, Louisiana. During their residency, they explored the ways that BDSM can produce epistemologies that consider how Black, trans eroticism can be in conversation with environmental justice. Through performance-based video art, archival research, and noise making, J.M.’s project is in conversation with scholars such as Chelsea M. Frazier who call forth a deeper understanding of Black feminist interventions in environmentalism (Troubling Ecology, 2016). SWAMP also worked on the beginnings of ‘Apothecary for the Apocalypse’ by connecting with the local ecologies of Southern Louisiana, and multi-generational, Black and Indigenous healers to dream of non-extracting earth essences that help facilitate our connections to the Earth and interpersonal dynamics.
What is your particular flavor of Radical Black Femme-ness?
“This is a great question... My particular flavor... I would say my flavor consists of a gallon of dis-respectability, a cup of gender fluidity, a few heaping spoons of the erotic, two (on a day where I’m particularly on my bullshit, ten) shakes of hood realness, and an unapologetic flush of rage. My Blackness is informed by my Southside Chicago-raised, Black American parents. My Femmeness by my maternal grandmother who was not to be fucked with.” - SWAMP PRIESTEXX
