Juliana Huxtable

Juliana Huxtable (born December 29, 1987) is an American artist, writer, performer, DJ, and co-founder of the New York–based nightlife project Shock Value. Huxtable has exhibited and performed at a number of venues including Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Project Native Informant, Artists Space, the New Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Institute of Contemporary Arts. Huxtable's multidisciplinary art practice explores a number of projects, such as the internet, the body, history, and text, often through a process she calls "conditioning." Huxtable is a published author of two books and a member of the New York City–based collective House of Ladosha. She is on the roster of the talent agency Discwoman, a New York based collective and talent agency that books DJs for parties and events around the world. She previously lived and worked in New York City, and has been based in Berlin since 2020.

Early life and education Huxtable was born in Bryan-College Station, Texas. She has described her hometown as a typical "conservative Bible Belt town in Texas." Huxtable's mother, Kassandra, raised Huxtable and her two siblings alone after Huxtable's parents divorced.

Huxtable moved to New York to attend Bard College and graduated in 2010. In an interview with artist Lorraine O'Grady, Huxtable mentioned studying literature and gender studies.

Emerging in New York Huxtable moved to New York to work as a legal assistant for the ACLU's Racial Justice Program after college. While at the ACLU, Huxtable amassed a significant following on Tumblr, posting long stream-of-consciousness poems and self-portraits that experimented with fashion and Nuwaubian imagery. The same year Huxtable participated in the House of Ladosha's show The Whole House Eats (stylized as THE WHOLE HOUSE EATS) at Superchief Gallery. During her time as a DJ, Huxtable integrated her poetry into DJ mixes. Huxtable's poetry was featured in the song "Blood Oranges" from Le1f's mixtape Tree House as well as the runway soundtrack for the Hood by Air 2014 Fall/Winter fashion show "10,000 Screaming Faggots" by Total Freedom.

Huxtable's interest in fashion led her to model for a number of fashion houses and campaigns. In 2014, she was featured on the fifth anniversary cover of C☆NDY magazine along with a number of other transgender women – Janet Mock, Carmen Carrera, Geena Rocero, Isis King, Leyna Ramous, Yasmine Petty, and Laverne Cox. Huxtable has modeled for DKNY, Eckhaus Latta, Chromat, and French fashion house Kenzo.

Work New Museum Triennial and Performa 15 Biennial

In early 2015, Huxtable was selected to present work in the 2015 New Museum Triennial Surround Audience, curated by Lauren Cornell and artist Ryan Trecartin. Vogue Writer Mark Guiducci dubbed Huxtable the "Star of the New Museum Triennial".

Later that year, Huxtable was selected to showcase a new performance piece in the Performa 15 Biennial. The hour-long performance titled, There Are Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed, was presented at the Museum of Modern Art. It included poetry, audio and voice over, video elements, and live-music with fellow collaborators and explored the complicated relationship between the ephemeral nature of digital information and the drive for historical documentation on the internet. As described by the festival's organizers, Huxtable's performance considered "cyberspace as a twilight zone of precariousness and preservation, traversing closed servers, bounced URLs, and Google cache as human and digital characters".

Shock Value, House of Ladosha, and other projects Huxtable is a founder and DJ for Shock Value, a weekly New York City–based nightlife collective run by women artists, DJs, writers, and fashion icons. She is also member of the New York City–based collective House of Ladosha. Members include Cunty Crawford Ladosha (Adam Radakovich), Neon Christina Ladosha, Paws Off Ladosha (Riley Hooker), Magatha Ladosha (Michael Magnan), La Fem Ladosha (Antonio Blair), and YSL Ladosha (Yan Sze Li). In January 2016, House of Ladosha showcased various art projects in This Is Your Brain. In 2017, the collective was selected to participate in the group exhibition Trigger: Gender as a Weapon and a Tool at the New Museum. They were also featured in Issue 7 of the magazine Gayletter.

Huxtable currently sits on the editorial board for Topical Cream, a New York–based platform that supports a community of artists, writers, designers, and technologists through digital publishing and public programming initiatives.

In 2016, Huxtable was a Visiting Artists Program lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Huxtable has participated in multiple panels and lectures, including Basquiat and Contemporary Queer Art hosted by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Transgender in the Mainstream hosted by Art Basel Miami Beach, Body Work: Performance and Practice hosted by Art Basel and Open Score: Generation You presented by the New Museum and Rhizome.

Also in 2016, Huxtable headlined the opening night performance of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art Festival in Portland, Oregon. Solo exhibitions Huxtable's first solo exhibition, A Split During Laughter at the Rally, opened at Reena Spaulings in New York City in May 2017. The exhibition featured several posters with DIY-inspired magnets, a video piece featuring members from House of Ladosha, and a flow chart. The exhibition featured three photographs of a black subject with various (often conflicting) tattoos, four sculptural paintings made of military-style clothing, and ten pamphlet-sized posters recounting, "a brawl between Antifa leftist skinheads and Nazi skinheads outside of a Fred Perry sample sale in Paris". The show continues Huxtable's exploration into conspiracy theories and paranoia, subcultures, and identity but on a more humorous note. Fashion also plays a major role throughout Huxtable's practice as this show highlights. Huxtable has referenced Jose Esteban-Muñoz's "Disidentification" as a major inspiration.

Books Huxtable has produced two books and contributed to a number of chapbooks and artist's writing anthologies.

Her first book, Mucus in My Pineal Gland, was published in 2017 by Capricious. The book is a collection of previously performed poems, like UNTITLED (FOR STEWART) and THERE ARE CERTAIN FACTS THAT CANNOT BE DISPUTED, as well as a number of new poems.

Music Huxtable has collaborated with renowned producer SOPHIE, forming a music duo called Analemma. The duo produced two tracks on Locus Error, an acid techno concept album released through Nina Kraviz's Trip Records. Huxtable also contributed vocals to one of the two tracks, "Plunging Asymptote", which would later appear on SOPHIE's posthumous self-titled album.

Awards Huxtable received a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship.

Themes Huxtable's practice is interdisciplinary by nature and thus explores a range of topics. Earlier works explore ideas of identity, the body, and text, with influences from Afrofuturism and science fiction. Huxtable's more recent works explore language, conspiracy theories, fashion (Baroque costumes, military surplus, punk aesthetics, etc.), and various countercultures. Huxtable often, "references her use of digital spaces, including Tumblr," chat rooms, social media, online sexual subcultures, Encarta, and Afripedia as well as childhood, fashion, consumer culture, and the African diaspora.

Huxtable has noted a range of influences including writers Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany, theorists Luce Irigaray and Jose Esteban-Muñoz, and the visual aesthetics of video director Hype Williams, bands TLC and Blaque, and singer Aaliyah.

Exhibitions and performances Solo exhibitions Juliana Huxtable: USSYPHILIA, at Fotografiska Berlin, Germany, 2023-24 INTERFERTILITY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: SNATCH THE CALF BACK, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, NY, 2019 Perverts, Cell Project Space, London, 2017 Time-Based Art Festival 2016, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR, 2016 DISSENT: what they fear is the light, Curated by Shoghig Halajian and Thomas Lawson, Los Angeles, CA, 2016 Bring Your Own Body: transgender between archives and aesthetics, 41 Cooper Gallery, Cooper Union, New York City, New York, 2015 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, New Museum, New York, NY, 2015 Selected online exhibitions New Black Portraiture, Curated by Aria Dean, Rhizome.org Collection Online at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Performances Stewart Uoo presents It's Get Better V, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England, 2017 Bring Your Own Body, Organized by Jeanne Vaccaro with Stamatina Gregory, 41 Cooper Gallery, New York, NY, 2015 There Are Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed, Performa 15 Biennial co-commissioned by Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2015 Leigha Mason & Casey Jane Ellison present Inner Space, MoMA PS1, Queens, NY, 2014 Stewart Uoo presents It's Get Better II, Artists Space, New York, NY, 2014 Take Ecstasy with Me, Organized by Alexandro Segade (of My Barbarian) & Miguel Gutierrez, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 2014 Looking Back: The Eighth White Columns Annual – Selected by Pati Hertling, White Columns, New York, NY, 2014 Stewart Uoo presents It's Get Better, Artists Space, New York, NY, 2013

Discography "Lionsong" (Björk remix, 2015, One Little Indian Records) (Lionsong included the remix by Juliana Huxtable. ) Black History Month in 3D Mix with Dedekind Cut fka Lee Bannon 2016