Demian DinéYazhi ́performs his work AN INFECTED SUNSET, a risograph-printed work published by Pur Dubois Press. The event will include additional readings from Lucas de Lima, Jess X Snow, and El Roy Red.

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AN INFECTED SUNSETis an ekphrastic long-form prose poem first conceived in August 2016 in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting, police killings of unarmed Black men, and in the midst of the Standing Rock #NoDAPL Resistance. During the writing of the poem the settler colonial nation-state elected the 45th president of this colonized country, which revealed a sudden revival of extreme white supremacist nationalism. As the social and political landscape evolved, the LIBERATED POEM emerged as an offering to Indigenous communities and landscapes striving for a decolonial and sovereign future emancipated from white supremacist capitalist hetero-patriarchal settler colonial trauma drama. This performance poem is a reflection on queer sex, survival/death politics, indigenous identity, settler and heteronormative romanticism, environmental injustice, and the importance of honoring community.

Demian DinéYazhi ́ (born 1983) is an Indigenous Diné transdisciplinary artist born to the clans Naasht'ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích'íí'nii (Bitter Water). Growing up in the colonized border town of Gallup, New Mexico, the evolution of DinéYazhi ́’s work has been influenced by his ancestral ties to traditional Diné culture and ceremony, matrilineal upbringing, the sacredness of land, and the importance of intergenerational knowledge. Through research, mining community archives, and social collaboration and activism, DinéYazhi ́ highlights the intersections of Radical Indigenous Queer Feminist identity and political ideology while challenging the white noise of the contemporary art movement. They have recently exhibited at Whitney Museum of American Art (2018), Henry Art Gallery (2018), Pioneer Works (2018), CANADA, NY (2017); and UNM-Gallup Ingham Chapman Gallery (2016).

DinéYazhi ́ is the founder of the Indigenous artist/activist initiative, R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment. DinéYazhi ́ also serves as co-editor of Locusts: A Post-Queer Nation Zine. They are the recipient of the Henry Art Museum’s Brink Award (2017) and is a Hallie Ford Fellow in the Visual Arts (2018). @heterogeneoushomosexual

Jess X. Snow is a queer asian-canadian filmmaker, public artist and pushcart-nominated poet. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently studying directing in the MFA program for film at the NYU Tisch School of The Arts. As a result of the rootlessness and migrations that marked her childhood, she developed a stutter which she overcame through her discovery of visual and written language.She uses magical realism and science fiction as tools to explore the what care for the body and land can look like in the queer migrant future. Her poetry has been published in Nepantla: An Anthology of Queer Poets of Color, Bettering American Poetry, among others. Her first chapbook of poetry is forthcoming from YesYes Books.

Lucas de Lima is the author of Wet Land (Action Books) and the chapbook Terraputa (Birds of Lace). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in PEN Poetry, Poetry Foundation, boundary2, Apogee, and Aster(ix), and anthologies pertaining to queer, Latinx, avant-garde, and eco-poetics. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and the recipient of a fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

El Roy Red works in the space btwn hope & efficacy until they reach actualization. Galvanized in Black/ Brown queer liberation, Red utilizes writing, movement, ritual & performance to facilitate healing, growth, & alternative futures. #postafrofuturism They have shared work in print w apogee journal, handjob zine, & femmescapes zine. IRL She has performed in Amsterdam & Berlin…. locally @ Artist Space, the Bronx Museum, the Poetry Project, & the Segue Reading Series to name a few. & Recently, she has spoken @ the Brooklyn Museum as part of the Trans Oral History Project.