Queering the Collection: Gender Fluidity and Buddhist Deities

About the Guest Speaker

Abdu Ali is a Baltimore-based electronic musician, writer, cultural worker and multidisciplinary artist who works in sound, collaboration, video and performance. Their work often interrogates ideas of race, gender and sexuality that manifests as poetic inquiries of identity, promoting liberation from oppressive ideologies and encouraging self-marginalized peoples to be self-determined.

Ali’s work also centers promoting authentic Black queer legacies and narratives as their histories are often subjected to distortion and erasure. Described as a cosmic, punk and soulful tempest on stage, Ali has performed their energetic and visceral shows at MoMA PS1, The Carnegie Museum of Art, and The Kennedy Center, and their work has been highlighted by The New York Times, The Fader, Elephant Magazine and Tracks Arte TV. In 2019, Ali founded as they lay, a curatorial platform that claims space for critical dialogue, collaboration and radical envisioning for Black creative futures. Ali has held residencies at Red Bull Music, Pioneer Works, and in 2022 was a visiting artist at the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University. Ali was also a recipient of the 2018 Ruby Artist Grant.

Photo by Sidney Allen