Color Plates

Plate 1. A painting detail with an abstract composite diver among swathes of color and animate plant monsters in a purple watery field. Acrylic painting by the author, 2020.

Plate 2. Two dancers in an outdoor building site, on top of a heap of earth, one wrapped in a black fabric while the other holds the other end of the fabric loop. Video still, projected onto the ceiling of the Light Box in Detroit during taisha paggett’s workshop sharing of School for the Movement of the Technicolo(u)r People installation, 2019. Photograph by the author.

Plate 3. Two GAWK performers on Federation Square, Melbourne, skin white with either sun protection or makeup, sitting on a tall platform below power lines, leaning toward the audience. One is wearing a headdress full of organic botanical shapes and soft body armor; the other is wearing a white lounge suit with a white flower on his lapel. Rollercoaster Theater, 2008. Photograph by the author.

Plate 4. Wonderslow participatory performance, Dandelion Dancetheater and guests, 2011. Four people dressed in white clothes, three bipedals, one wheelchair user, three (Julia Hollas, Eric Kupers, Cristina Carrasquillo) in flocking echo with one other, a fourth in the background moving among umbrellas that respond to winds. Arranged on the central facet of Frank Ogawa Plaza: the amphitheater or “the Forum.” Photograph courtesy of Luiza Silva.

Plate 5. Native women language keepers. Video still of two Anishinaabekwe, Ojibwe women, drumming and singing in front of a colorful Daphne Odjig painting projected as the stage background. One of the performers, Jasmine Pawlicki (left), will appear again as an underwater creature in Plate 11.

Plate 6. bree gant strides across the park with two large water-filled containers on their shoulders, wrapped in a brown dress with a green scarf loosely hung over their right shoulder. A blue feather sticks out of their multicolored headdress. Otherlogue (III), at Brown on Green Festival, 2019. Photograph courtesy of Cheryl Willard.

Plate 7. Shot of a pink bathroom with a tub. In the tub is bree gant, a Detroit-bred multidisciplinary artist and photographer reimagining African diasporic visual culture. Their eyes are closed. All surfaces are covered with water vessels, translucent shells that capture the light. Photograph courtesy of bree gant.

Plate 8. Salamander: Neve (they/he), a Disabled multigender femme fop mixed-race Black African choreographer/dancer, composer/singer, writer/actor, painter/model, “hoodoo voodoo” magician, and performance artist. Neve floats just beneath the surface of the water, serene, tattoos beneath spreading hair, flowery bikini top. Photograph courtesy of the Olimpias (collaborative image making, processed by the author).

Plate 9. Salamander: Chanika Svetvilas (she/her): a Thai American disabled interdisciplinary artist and mental health advocate. Floating underwater, a sea of bubbles, concentration, descent, an arm raised into the blue. Photograph courtesy of the Olimpias (collaborative image making, processed by the author).

Plate 10. Salamander: Neil Marcus (he/him), White, spastic poet, dancer, philosopher in the Bay Area, Salamander project cofounder, and Chia-Yi Seeto (she/her), Beijing-based dance artist. Two dancers underwater, one angled down, alert, silvery pelt hair, one upright, a bubble resting on her smiling mouth. Photograph courtesy of the Olimpias (collaborative image making, processed by the author).

Plate 11. Salamander: Jasmine Pawlicki (she/her); Anishinaabe; a singer, drum group leader and powwow dancer, disabled woman in a Michigan lake. Photograph courtesy of the Olimpias (collaborative image making, processed by the author).

Plate 12. Salamander: Stephanie Heit (she/her), a White poet, dancer, bipolar, and a mad activist. Arms outstretched and flying, breasts bared, goggles mark an alien creature deep in a Michigan lake. Photograph courtesy of the Olimpias (collaborative image making, processed by the author).

Plate 13. Two White dancers and the hands of a third at a tea table, in bright warm colors (Yulia Arakelyan, Erik Ferguson, Grant Miller). Lace, light-color porcelain, concentration on faces, careful ritual. Video still from Waking the Green Sound (2015), cinematography by Ian Lucero.

Plate 14. The three dancers next to one another, the middle one on a red velvet throne, all seminude, one with chest tattoos around scars, all in golden cloth draping. Expressions of trance states: wide-open eyes, pupils turned upward, mouths open as if droning. Video still from Waking the Green Sound (2015), cinematography by Ian Lucero.

Plate 15. Video still: Antoine Hunter, an African, Indigenous, Deaf, Disabled, Two-Spirit dancer, with one leg raised high and two arms wide open, nearly flying, against the visual rhythm of urban streets. Make Me Wanna Holler (United States, 2018), directed by Erica Eng, choreographed by Dawn James and Antoine Hunter.

Plate 16. (Small mammoth) A fossilized mammoth tooth and a small plastic figure of a mammoth at the Museum of Archeology Ontario. Photograph by the author, 2020.