Sugar Babies and Black Diamonds: Marronage Age Daydreams in the Gulf South
Rian (Raven) Crane explores contemporary Black Trans Southern aesthetics in this month's Mood Ring through cyanotypes, written narrative, and lineage tracing.
Rian (Raven) Crane (he/they) is a post-disciplinary performance artist interested in Black diasporic rebellion as an anti-thesis to borders, gender, and prisons. Their work explores the paradox of hyper-visibility for Black +/ Trans folks as well as the ongoing genocidal settler project of Anti-Blackness, displacement, colonial-made borders and severed ties from the land. Their work posits Black fugitivity as a refusal to the colonial imagination; they imagine Blackness in relation to land, water, and nonhuman kindred. He collaborates with other artists and communities to counter isolation, individualism, and the hyper-productivity of end-capitalism.