TransFire Artists In Residence Present: Works in Progress

Our 2023-24 TransFire Artists are fire!!! TransFire: Works In Progress is an opportunity to get a sneak peek behind the scenes of what our artists are uncovering and developing in their residency. This potent hour will feature the brilliant work of: Venus Kii, Anjali, Troy Rockett, Misty Mausi, and jayvie song.

Artists Bios 

Venus Kii Thomas (xe/xym)is a Black queer autistic multigender trans femme from Occupied Choctaw Territory, commonly known as Baton Rouge, Louisiana, living on Occupied Piscataway/Susquehannock Territory (Baltimore, Maryland). A writer, multidisciplinary artist, sex worker, land steward, and abolitionist, xyr practice has led xym to performing and presenting in many community art spaces, festivals, workshops, & universities throughout the colonized United States. Venus also serves as a founding creative team member of the Heaux History Project, a collective working to document and preserve the history and legacies of Black, Brown, and Indigenous sex workers through multimedia. Learn more and support Venus @venuskiithomas

Misty Mausi Rural Mississippi birthed me but never felt for me. The River. The Dust. The Cotton Fields. Over the years, this training in small-town manners and discipline would carry me to Stanford, where I studied theater, performance, and social theory. One of my highlights was a blessing; learning playwriting and performance under the tutelage of the great Cherrie Moraga. Over the years that passed afterward, I would find myself doing dolphin and shark tours in the Bahamas, advocating for artists in New Orleans, fighting towards environmental justice for the Gulf South at the COP21 in Paris, and eventually in several leadership roles for abolitionist campaigns, including one that successfully closed a jail in San Francisco! As an artist, my next big project is ahead of me; over the past two years, I have dived into content creation and live audio. Over the next two, I will be expanding to YouTube, Vimeo, and OnlyFans–while dabbling as a burlesque performance in foreign language songs. Follow the journey at @mausimisty

Troy Oko (Troy Rockett) (he/they) is a San Francisco based artist and media producer. He dedicates his artistic practice towards the expansion of gender expression and cultural liberation. Troy shares stories through poetry, theater and film and holds an MA in Creative Writing and Literature. He is a LAMBDA Literary fellow in Playwriting, a VONA Voices fellow in Poetry, an Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund recipient, a 2021 Theatre Bay Area Titan Award Winner, and is part of the producers circle with the Queer Women of Color MediaArts Project. His recent body of works explore themes of salvation, the making of new rites and passages for Trans identities, relationship mending, and invocations for Trans-Immortality.He presented his choreopoem Driftwood at the 8th Annual New Masculinities Festival, and had a first public reading of his play Bold Fade developed by 3Girls Theatre Company in San Francisco. Both projects will be staged in 2023

Anjali is a musician and new media artist from a highway hotel  in the rural South. Through songwriting, vocals, synth, bass,  guitar, and code, they have told the story of Diaspoura. Traumaporn (2018) by Diaspoura is a sonic study of power and  vulnerability, using rigid beats, bells, and dense harmonies. They were a part of  seeding a cultural movement for fair artist pay from music  streaming giants, which are currently being progressed by the  musicians' union UMAW. In  2019, a virtual harm-reduction toolkit was released on  Diaspoura.com/DirtyLaundry.htm regarding the effects of Big  Tech platforms on creators and users. Their latest zine Studies On Love (2021) is a vision of care,  desire, healing, and pleasure for every relationship. Learn more about their work @wifibutterfly

jayvie song (he/him) is a teaching artist and cultural worker of mixed afro- indigenous descent with an interdisciplinary approach whose work speaks to his revolutionary politics, spirituality, and his  entanglement with language. jayvie's writing is equally influenced by the scenes he grew up around spoken word and rap, to be specific. jayvie sees his artistic practice as a way to communicate with the World, with himself, with his ancestors... Thematically, his work stitches together the old and the new, holds both the mythological and the mundane, code-switching the whole way through.  jayvie has 5+ years of experience in creative workshop facilitation and community organizing, having spent these last few years crafting space(s) for himself and his community to heal, transform and grow. You can follow jayvie @jayvie000

What is TransFire? TransFire Artists Residency’ is a 9-month low residency program for TGNC+  visual artists, performers, writers, and creatives of gender expressions, and abilities. Benefits for this residency include: curated studio times, stipends, financial support for art supplies, workshops from arts professionals, an expense-paid retreat at Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom, participation in two performances, and collaborations with other BIPOC centered arts program. TransFire is an opportunity for TGNC+ Artists who desire to create and share their work with larger audiences. Some of these audiences will include but are not limited to: BIPOC communities, Healing Justice movements, Arts Organizations, Museums, Galleries, and more. As well as receive training on a variety of artistic subjects such as branding, creating accessible art, monetizing your art, networking, developing greater artistic discipline, and aligning your art with social justice movements. To learn more you can contact the Director Spirit McIntyre (Spirit/they/them) at spirit@acorncenter4freedom.com