Tourmaline

Filmmaker

she, her, hers, they, them, theirs

NEW YORK, NY

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A Black nonbinary trans person with a high bun of dark brown hair, eye shadow, and dark lipstick poses in a wooded area. She looks softly into the camera with one hand placed on her chest and wears a one-shoulder white top that showcases her tattoos.

Tourmaline is a filmmaker, writer, and activist, whose work highlights the capacity of Black Queer/Trans social life to impact the world, while living what is simultaneously an invisible— and hypervisible— existence. The throughline of her filmmaking focuses on everyday people and their mundane creative acts that blur the lines of what constitutes the public. Her work includes Salacia, Mary of Ill Fame, Atlantic is a Sea of Bones, The Personal Things, Lost in the Music, and Happy Birthday, Marsha! She is also an editor of TRAP DOOR, an anthology on Trans cultural production published by the New Museum & MIT Press. Her work has been presented at The High Line (2019); The Museum of Modern Art (2019); The Brooklyn Museum (2016, 2019); MoMA PS1 (2019); The Kitchen (2019, 2018); BFI Flare (2018); Portland Art Museum (2018); BAM Cinematek (2018); The New Museum (2017); The Whitney Museum (2017); MOCA LA (2017); The Studio Museum in Harlem (2017); and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2017). She received a BA from Columbia University and is the recipient of the Publishing Triangle Award (2018); Special Mention at Outfest Film Festival (2018); HBO & Queer/Art Prize (2017); and the Art Matters Foundation Grant (2016).