What is the significance of this work to you? What is the significance of the form you chose for this work? What was your process for creating this work?

What is the significance of this work to me, the form, and my process for creating these works can best be summed up: they deal with Afrofuturism, science fiction, and/or speculative fictions. These forms give people who identify as with the African and African American diaspora and/or with being Black, Indigenous, Queer, and People Of Color BIQPOC folks a safer space where we can practice and share our aesthetics on our own terms. 

My major influences and/or messages conveyed were channeled by engaging the works of mayfield brooks, Marlon Riggs, Langston Hughes, Jayson Musson, Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia E. Butler, and Dorian Corey of the African and African American diaspora whose work and/or art criticism focuses on Black aesthetics, Black processes, and the Black artist identity in western culture(s). These sources speak in depth about racial identity where the queer Black creative is concerned. For instance, how do people of the African and African American diaspora deal/process/balance their racial identities in the field(s) of art? In my case it’s considering how these drawings/performances/writings practices all while Black and queer impact my ability to navigate some of the harsh landscapes in this field coupled with the -isms, and erasures that White western aesthetics produce to hinder BIQPOC survival. Moreover, many of these works helped bring clarity and better articulation of Black mark making be it either in text form, or two-dimensional renderings, or through a performance; to explore some of the beauty and ugliness that still prevail for a twenty first century Black queer artist and beyond. In short, my questions involving identity deal with the importance of creating safer space and/or aesthetics as an Black, Indigenous, Queer, and People Of Color BIQPOC artist, and how this is pertinent to our survival? My idea of survival in this context was broadened after reviewing Achille Mbembe’s text on necropolitics and Silvia Posocco/Jin Haritaworn/Adi Kuntsman on queer necropolitics helped me to meditate on how for BIQPOC folks there must also be many ways to survive; and more importantly the ways we continue to thrive through Black and Latinx Ballroom culture, Black Speculative fiction, Houses, Black Foodways, Reading and Throwing shade, chosen family, and for me it’s been through creative practices such as drawing. 

Lastly, my process centers Practice as Research (PAR). Meaning, not only engaging with finished work(s) of Black Speculative fiction(s) i.e. text based works and/or visuals, or the criticism about these fictions, but I argue with this work and the work I will continue to make; that it is equally important to practice making Black Speculative fiction(s) due to there being a scholarly knowing/knowledge that is derived from the very act of practicing itself. By not considering drawing practices be they 2D, 3D, 4D, or text based as research at the same level as finished works and/or the criticism in this field; what are we missing out on as creatives and/or scholars by privileging one form of research over the other? Understand, my goal here with these texts and/or the drawings, is not to get the audience/readers to become professional artists, or writers, showing at art galleries or having their speculative fiction(s) appear on the New York Times bestseller lists. If that happens that would be great! However, the meaning of practitioner in this context involves the concept of Practice as Research. Meaning, a person is informed by actually practicing the techniques, theories, and hypotheses some creatives implore when creating their works. In short, just reading these Black Speculative fiction(s) created from this project, which is not meant to recreate the writing practice or make sense out of the final drafts. This work is meant to provide more clarity in the case of what it feels/felt like to draw and/or write Speculative fiction(s) while being a Black, Indigenous, Queer, and People Of Color (BIQPOC) creative. 

Maurice Moore is currently a doctoral Performance Studies Candidate at the University of California-Davis. His creative non-fiction, critical essays, fictional, and visual works have appeared in bozalta Collective, Harbor Review, Rigorous, Wicked Gay Ways, Storm Cellar Journal, Loud and Queer Zine, Strukturriss Quarterly Journal, HIVES Buzz-Zine, As Loud As It’s Kept Magazine, Unlikely Stories Mark V, and Confluence. From 2011 to 2021, he has exhibited work and performed at the Medford Arts Center in New Jersey, Memorial Union Gallery in Fargo North Dakota, the International House Davis (I-House) in Davis California, The Center for Visual Artists in Greensboro North Carolina, Christina Ray Gallery in Soho New York, the Lee Hansley Gallery in Raleigh North Carolina, the Gallery 307 + Orbit Galleries in Athens Georgia, Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro North Carolina, and performed with Rios/Miralda for the Garbage Celebration in Madison Wisconsin.