Tourmaline | |
---|---|
Born | Massachusetts, U.S. | July 20, 1983
Nationality | American |
Other names | Reina Gossett |
Alma mater | Columbia University |
Occupation | Activist • filmmaker • writer |
Relatives | Che Gossett (sibling) |
Website | tourmalineproductions |
Tourmaline (born 1983; [1] [2] formerly known as Reina Gossett) [3] [4] is an American artist, filmmaker, activist, editor, and writer. She is a transgender woman who identifies as queer. [2] Tourmaline is most notable for her work in transgender activism and economic justice, through her work with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Critical Resistance and Queers for Economic Justice. [5]
In 2017, she edited the book Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, [6] with co-editors Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton. The book is part of a series called Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture by MIT Press. [7] Tourmaline served as the 2016–2018 Activist-in-Residence at Barnard Center for Research on Women. [8] She is based in New York City.
Tourmaline was born on July 20, 1983, [1] [2] and grew up in a feminist household in Massachusetts. Her mother is a union organizer and her father is a self-defense instructor and anti-imprisonment advocate. Her sibling Che Gossett is involved in AIDS activism and anti HIV criminalization work. [9]
Tourmaline and Che went to a bilingual elementary school in Roxbury where "the teachers were abusive," and later attended suburban schools where they "went from living in poverty to going to school with wealthy people like Mitt Romney's kids." [9]
Tourmaline moved to New York City for college in 2002. [9]
Tourmaline attended Columbia University, and received a Bachelor of Arts [10] in Comparative Ethnic Studies.
Through a school program called Island Academy, she taught creative writing classes at Rikers Island correctional institution. [11] [9] While at Columbia University, she served on the President's Council on Student Affairs amidst a Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Departmental Scandal.[ citation needed ] In addition, she was also a chaplain's associate and a member of Students Promoting Empowerment and Knowledge.[ citation needed ]
Tourmaline has worked at various organizations dealing with transgender activism, economic justice, and prison abolition. She served as the Membership Coordinator for Queers for Economic Justice. At the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, she served as the Director of Membership. [8] She has been a featured speaker about transgender issues at GLAAD. [12]
Along with Critical Resistance, Tourmaline organized a campaign with low income LGBTGNC that prevented the NYC Department of Corrections from building a $375 million jail in the Bronx. [13] Tourmaline has done prison abolition work through a video series, titled No One is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Prison Abolition, with Dean Spade. [14]
Tourmaline has also performed work as a community historian for drag queens and transgender individuals around the Stonewall Inn rebellion, observing how archives and repositories rarely prioritize saving transgender artist materials. [15] Instead, Tourmaline has stated that these materials are typically "accidentally archived." [16] Tourmaline has combated this with contemporary trans focused projects, including Tumblr blogs, such as The Spirit Was..., and podcasts. [16]
Tourmaline was featured in Brave Spaces: Perspectives on Faith and LGBT Justice (2015), which was produced by Marc Smolowitz and screened as a Human Rights Campaign event.[ citation needed ]
Tourmaline began her film career in 2010 when she worked on Kagendo Murungi’s Taking Freedom Home .[ citation needed ] For this film she gathered oral histories form LGBTQ New Yorkers on the challenges faced accessing affordable housing, medical care, and social services. In 2016 she directed her first film The personal Things which features trans elder Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, who reflects on her life as an activist. In 2017 Tourmaline was awarded a Queer Art Prize for her work in on this film. Tourmaline also worked on the Golden Globe nominated film Mudbound as an assistant director to Dee Rees. [17]
Tourmaline has made numerous films about trans activism. STAR People Are Beautiful People (2009), co-produced with Sasha Wortzel, documents the life and work of Sylvia Rivera and STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). [18] Her next work, also co-produced with Wortzel, Happy Birthday, Marsha! , explores the life of activist Marsha P. Johnson. [19] [20] Trans women played every major role in the film and queer and trans activists volunteered at the event. [21] [22] [23]
In October 2017, Tourmaline alleged that filmmaker David France plagiarized her grant submission to the Arcus Foundation to create the documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson , [24] which debuted on Netflix on October 6. Tourmaline and collaborator Sasha Wortzel were applying for a grant for financial assistance to release their short film, Happy Birthday, Marsha! . This claim was supported by transgender activist Janet Mock. France denied the allegation. [25] [26] [27] [28] Independent investigations launched by both Jezebel and The Advocate exonerated France and concluded that Gossett's allegations against him were without merit. [29] [30] The debate has brought up questions of artistic integrity, who owns archival footage, and what constitutes a valid accusation. [31] [32] [33]
Also in 2017, Tourmaline’s work was featured at the New Museum in New York in an exhibition titled Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon . [34]
In 2020, the Museum of Modern Art acquired her 2019 film Salacia, about Mary Jones, for its permanent collection. [35] [36] In 2021, The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired two works by the artist, including Summer Azure, for display in Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room. [37]
Marsha P. Johnson was an American gay liberation activist and self-identified drag queen. Known as an outspoken advocate for gay rights, Johnson was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
Sylvia Rivera was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who was also a noted community worker in New York. Rivera, who identified as a drag queen for most of her life and later as a transgender person, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front.
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) was a gay, gender non-conforming and transvestite street activist organization founded in 1970 by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, subculturally-famous New York City drag queens of color. STAR was a radical political collective that also provided housing and support to homeless LGBT youth and sex workers in Lower Manhattan. Rivera and Johnson were the "mothers" of the household, and funded the organization largely through sex work. STAR is considered by many to be a groundbreaking organization in the queer liberation movement and a model for other organizations.
David France is an American investigative reporter, non-fiction author, and filmmaker. He is a former Newsweek senior editor, and has published in New York magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and others. France, who is gay, is best known for his investigative journalism on LGBTQ topics.
Cyrus Dunham is an American writer, actor, and activist. Dunham is a published author, whose debut book, A Year Without A Name: A Memoir, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
Eli Erlick is an American activist, writer, academic, trans woman and founder of the organization Trans Student Educational Resources.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, often referred to as Miss Major, is an American author, activist, and community organizer for transgender rights. She has participated in activism and community organizing for a range of causes, and served as the first executive director for the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project.
Mark Cagaanan Aguhar was an American activist, writer and multimedia fine artist known for her multidisciplinary work about gender, beauty and existing as a racial minority, while being body positive and transgender femme-identified. Aguhar was made famous by her Tumblr blog that questioned the mainstream representation of the "glossy glorification of the gay white male body".
Mya Taylor is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Alexandra in the 2015 film Tangerine for which she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female.
Happy Birthday, Marsha! is a 2017 fictional short film that imagines the gay and transgender rights pioneers Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in the hours that led up to the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. The film stars Mya Taylor as Johnson and Eve Lindley as Rivera.
Sasha Wortzel is an artist, filmmaker, educator, and activist, based in New York City. She is the writer, director, and producer of Happy Birthday, Marsha! with Tourmaline. She and Tourmaline raised over $25,000 on Kickstarter to fund the film.
Silas Howard is an American film and television director, writer, and actor. His first feature film By Hook or by Crook (2001) co-directed with Harry Dodge is a seminal trans masc feature. Howard earned an MFA in directing at UCLA and is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. He began directing episodes during the second season of Transparent, making him the show's first trans director.
Chris E. Vargas is an artist and video maker whose work explores the ways that queer and trans people negotiate institutions and popular culture. Vargas is the founder of the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art (MOTHA), a project that blurs artist and curatorial practice. MOTHA has no permanent space, instead it has been presented at venues such as the Henry Art Gallery, Cooper Union, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Hammer Museum. Vargas videos have screened at SFMOMA, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pacific Film Archives, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, MIX NYC, Palais de Tokyo, Outfest, amongst other venues. Vargas completed a BA at University of California Santa Cruz and MFA at University of California, Berkeley.
Elle Moxley is an American transgender rights activist. She co-founded the Black Lives Matter Global Network, where she served as a strategic partner and organizing coordinator, and founded The Marsha P. Johnson Institute, where she serves as executive director.
Victoria Cruz is an American LGBT rights activist and retired domestic violence counselor. A contemporary of activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, she is featured in the 2017 documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson.
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson is a 2017 American documentary film directed by David France. It chronicles Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, prominent figures in gay liberation and transgender rights movement in New York City from the 1960s to the 1990s and co-founders of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The film centers on activist Victoria Cruz's investigation into Johnson's death in 1992, which was initially ruled a suicide by police despite suspicious circumstances. It is France's second film, following How to Survive a Plague (2012).
Che Gossett is a trans femme writer, scholar, and archivist. They have written extensively on black and trans visibility, black trans aesthetics, racial capitalism, and queer, trans and black radicalism, resistance and abolition.
Carrie Hawks is a gender non-conforming director and animator. They are known for their work on Black Enuf.
Fatima Jamal is an American filmmaker, model, writer, and interdisciplinary artist. A Black transgender woman who goes by the moniker "Fat Femme," Jamal is also an activist who speaks and makes art about social issues including racism, body positivity, and LGBTQ rights.
A Love Letter to Marsha is a sculpture featuring the LGBTQ activist Marsha P. Johnson by American artist Jesse Palotta. It was originally erected in Christopher Park along Christopher Street in the West Village section of Manhattan, New York. The monument was completed in 2021 and was notably the first statue of a transgender individual in New York City. The sculpture features a life-size bust of Johnson made of bronze with holes to insert flowers. It is a work of guerrilla art but was later approved by New York Park Services, making it the first sculpture of a transgender person in New York City. It currently resides at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.
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