Today, from our partners at Art Practical, we bring you an essay on the work of artist Brontez Purnell. Author Anna Martine Whitehead raises excellent questions about race, audience, and the nature of performance: “Will his art be taken on its own terms or viewed as a solution by program organizers and curators to the problem of how to present black creatives without investing in black life?” This article was originally published on February 3, 2015.

Brontez Purnell. Still from performance at KUNST-STOFF. Oct 10, 2015. Photo: Robbie Sweeny.

I almost began this column about Brontez Purnell with a poem. It went something like this:

Brontez Purnell is a black choreographer. Brontez Purnell is a punk rocker. Brontez Purnell is a faggot. Brontez Purnell is an author. Brontez Purnell is an addict. Brontez Purnell is a club dancer. Brontez Purnell is gay-mous. Brontez Purnell is a poet. Brontez Purnell is broken. Brontez Purnell is a lover. Brontez Purnell is a mystic. Brontez Purnell is still here, bitches.

It obviously needs some work, but you get the idea. I’m eager to gush about Purnell in verse precisely because it’s so hard to pin him down or pen him in. With several movie roles, a book, a handful of zines, at least three bands, and multiple dance projects under his belt, Purnell is in many ways the Twenty-First-Century Black Renaissance Fag. And, central to every Renaissance personality, Purnell always lets the project define his practice—which is also to say that he never lets the project define him. Regardless of the medium he’s working in, Purnell is never anything other than himself.

Read the full article here.