about
Meet the artist
Jo Xacto (they/she) is a Black genderqueer artist currently residing in Los Angeles, California. They graduated from UCSB with a degree in Black Studies in 2022, and are currently a graduate student in UCLA's African-American Studies MA program. Their research previously focused on Black queer and trans hip-hop, illicit eroticism, and subversion of Black cultural stereotypes. They explore these themes in their personal artistic practice, where they grapple with Black queer subjectivity and navigating gender dysphoria. Their collage practice is an attempt at reconciling competing versions of their ideal self, a process that often produces incoherent, messy and jarring visual representations. Through placing paper on a page, they pursue the possibility of personal peace.
What is Shattered Prisms?
Shattered Prisms is an art-based educational platform featuring analog collages depicting Black social movements, overlaid with interactive image maps. These image maps contain biographies of the historical figures depicted, as well as relevant essays, articles, videos, and other media. This is intended to highlight key figures within Black social movements whose contributions have been less recognized, particularly Black LGBTQ+ and women activists. The goal of this project is to provide an open-access learning space and archive of Black history through a Black queer feminist lens, utilizing collage as an alternative to other forms of data visualization. Each collage/archive piece will be adapted into learning modules that can be used by educators, memory workers, or community organizers. Proceeds generated from the prints of these works will be directed towards organizations that correspond with the issues being explored in each piece. This platform is not just educational — it is a counter-hegemonic strategy, an effort to redefine dominant sociopolitical, cultural and historical narratives while paving an innovative way to give back to the community. The name itself is a reference to the artistic language of this platform, the goals of Jo's personal practice, and the effort to repair historical narratives about Black communities that are either misrepresented, scattered throughout the archives, or simply in need of highlighting and centralization.