Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924–2024

Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924–2024
Through May 9, 2025
at Christian–Green Gallery and Idea Lab at AGBS, Austin, USA

UT Austin’s AGBS presents Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924–2024, a group exhibition of more than 50 artists.

The multi-venue survey exhibition curated by AGBS Curator Dr. Phillip Townsend. Through 59 artworks in a variety of media, the exhibition highlights visual representations of Black queer ecstasy from the last 100 years that surpass its absence from the historical record. Centering Blackness and queerness allows this exhibition to consider the potential of queer perspectives around the paradoxes of pleasure and pain, excess and lack, and autonomy and dependence. As such, the exhibition is organized around seven themes: Portraiture, Beyond Figuration, Dance and Movement, Spirituality, Sex and Sensuality, Black Queer Futures, and Altered States. Together these themes represent the foundations of queer, and especially Black queer, experiences and offer viewers a space to engage with artwork and ephemera that highlight an ecstatically abundant past and advocate for a more inclusive and equitable future.