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Juliana Huxtable: A Transgender Artist Finds Her Voice

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Juliana Huxtable, an artist, in her studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She is spending the summer as a D.J. in several cities around the world.

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Nathan Bajar for The New York Times

Juliana Huxtable

Age 29

Hometown College Station, Tex.

Now Lives In a four-bedroom apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with roommates. Ms. Huxtable’s room is a “very large basement cave.”

Photo

Ms. Huxtable in her studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Credit
Nathan Bajar for The New York Times

Claim to Fame Ms. Huxtable is a visual and performance artist, D.J., writer, night-life host and fashion model. After graduating from Bard College in 2010 and working briefly as a legal assistant for the American Civil Liberties Union, she began hosting a transgender-inclusive party called Shock Value that is as much an art project as an occasion to dance. Ms. Huxtable, who is transgender, said she believed that too much of New York’s night life for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people was oriented toward gay men. “I was really fascinated by the idea of club culture, the idea of a liminal, almost surreal space where people can cross paths in a way that can have a direct impact on music, on art, on writing, on fashion,” she said.

Big Break Ms. Huxtable found an early creative outlet through Tumblr and Instagram, where she would share provocative, often sexually charged images that dealt with topics like queer art and futurism. Eventually her selfies caught the attention of Lauren Cornell, a curator at the New Museum at the time, who included her in the museum’s triennial in 2015. The show included four of Ms. Huxtable’s prints, including two self-portraits, alongside a 3D-printed sculpture of her body by the artist Frank Benson.

Latest Project Her first solo art show, “A Split During Laughter at the Rally,” was on view at Reena Spaulings Fine Art on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in May and early June. It featured a series of political-style posters (slogans included “The War on Proof” and “The Feminist Scam”), mounted with campaign-style buttons on metallic walls.

Next Thing Her second solo art show is to open in September at the London gallery Project Native Informant. Meanwhile, she is spending much of her summer being a D.J. at music festivals and parties in Paris; Shanghai; Glasgow; Melbourne and Sydney in Australia; and Seoul, South Korea.

Dark Imaginings Ms. Huxtable had a difficult childhood, growing up in a town that she said was unaccepting of gender variance and minorities. She found her solace in writing short stories. “Fifth grade was when I really started to find my voice,” she said. “I had kind of a dark childhood and so a lot of them are about children being abused.”

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