The Source

“Altars: Black Queer Ecologies of the Spirit” is a visual intervention that addresses the significance of altars in the imagination and identities of black LGBTIQ+ subjects. Creating altars in African diasporic spiritual practices are one of the few historically safe spaces open to Black queers and are central to black queer people as a way of engaging with the past, present, and future of black life. Through the making of personal and communal altars, we can resist and persist as people, within an everyday reality of intersectional violence such as anti-Blackness, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.  Altars are also a way of creating communion with other Black queer-identified people, our ancestors, and the invisible cosmic world, bringing together an erotic poetics of intimacy and interiority.