Catastrophe and Care: Black Queer & Trans Art and Abolitionist Ecology
A lecture with Che Gossett

In this lecture, I focus on Kiyan Williams’s performance and sculpture, their engagement with soil, the archive of slavery, as well as their approach to transforming conditions of death and disposability into zones of inhabitation through black queer/trans ecology and vital materialism. I discuss their performance art and sculpture, especially: Unearthing (2016), Trash and Treasure (2014), Meditations on the Making of America (2019), Ruins of Empire II or The Earth Swallows the Master’s House (2024) and how they deploy bio-remediation and a black radical eco-aesthetics of mycology to envision earthly reparations beyond a racial liberal and racial capitalist calculus of repair. In their ongoing work on materialism, their engagement with soil, the archive of slavery, they use detritus and dirt to transform conditions of death and disposability into zones of inhabitation.

Che Gossett is a Black non-binary writer.  They are currently the associate director of the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and a 2024 Creative Capital Andy Warhol Writers Grant recipient. In May 2024 they completed their three year postdoctoral position as the Racial Justice Fellow at the Initiative for a Just Society, Columbia Law School.