Artist: Jon Key

Project: An excerpt from Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Artists, Designers, and Trailblazers (out from Levine Querido, November 19).

Description: In August 2009, I arrived at the Rhode Island School of Design as an undergrad student, surrounded by artists–creative people who I just knew would understand me and my work. I had moved from Seale, Alabama, a small speck of a town on the map whose closest neighbors–Phenix City, Alabama, and Columbus, Georgia–were my "big" cities. Providence was my opportunity to find a tribe of people who would love my Queer Black stories, and who would nurture my identity as an artist. I quickly realized this wasn't the case.

In lectures, I did not learn anything, or about anyone, that intersected with my identity. During critiques, my work was met with muted voices and blank stares. I was the only Black person in my graphic design section. I was one out of two or three Black people in my graduating class!

By my senior year, frustrated and seeking refuge, I turned to writing as a tool to question why my work was misunderstood and to answer the questions that were emerging inside me. How could I use art and design to tell stories about me and about my life? How did you make work that resonated with others? What stories were important to tell?

In Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Artists, Designers, and Trailblazers (out from Levine Querido, November 19), I hope to share glimpses of people, objects, and lives that are recorded in and who molded with the medium of art and design. Design has that ability to preserve, as long as we are looking. My hope is to offer my research so that we can all remember these stories and that we can understand the nuances and power that their Blackness and Queerness add. This book is a collection of all types of histories: the history of design, the history of print production, the history of people, the history of spaces, and my personal history.

Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Artists, Designers, and Trailblazers is out from Levine Querido, November 19th, 2024. Text and art copyright © 2024 by Jon Key. All rights reserved.