Maurice Moore
BODY DYSMORPHIA (FEAT. TRANS IS BEAUTIFUL)
Ink on paper, 19in x 24in, 2021
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This black and grey ink drawing is on pale gray paper. The lines show a jumble of arms, legs, and torsos that resemble a crowd or pile of people.
BODY EUPHORIA (FEAT. TRANS IS BEAUTIFUL, BIG BOI ENERGY)
Ink on paper, 19in x 24in, 2021
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This black and gray drawing on pale grey paper depicts another crowd of legs and torsos. Most are clearly resolved into figures, and the figures appear to be standing or dancing. Most are fleshier, and some have developed breasts.
BODYSCAPE (FEAT. THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY BACK)
Ink on paper, 8.5in x 11in, 2021
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This mass of illustrated body parts on white paper extends to all four sides of the page. There are several more faces visible in this grouping.
Artist statement:
Rendering while black is an exploration of sensorial feel/felt lines both in text and performative drawings involving 2D,3D,4D, and Speculative fiction(s) art practices. Moreover, the work explores how Black, Indigenous, Queer, and People Of Color (BIQPOC)'s have created a means of survival through visual/performance art, creating a mode(s) of active radical resistance. These mode(s) draw upon performative traditions including call and response, improvisation, reading, throwing shade, and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). My pieces extrapolate theories both from queer of color critique and Black foodways, synthesizing different dialects of an innovative visual/text languages. Mixing elements of Black foodways and Black Music into my art practice has broadened my sense of what it means to reconstruct while simultaneously deconstructing the Black body. In my work, the lines created literally intersect, overlap, and make fluid many of the diasporic identities that colonial powers would have me believe are fixed. By doing this work I can reimagine ways to fight anti-Blackness, queer-antagonism, the erasure, and the deafening silences caused by colonial powers. In short, these processes of making renew the vitality of queerness and/or blackness in both my current artistic practice and in my scholarly pursuits.