Juliana Huxtable

Early Life and transition

Huxtable's mother Kassandra, is from Gary, Indiana. In the 1960s, her father moved away from the family to teach at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, after he and Kassadra divorced, leaving her to raise Juliana and her two siblings alone.

Huxtable was raised in a Baptist family in the "conservative Bible Belt town" of Bryan-College Station, Texas. Huxtable was born intersex and began her medical transition after graduating college, but notes that struggles with her gender and sex started much earlier.

Through her time at Bard College, Huxtable wore a chest binder to appear flat chested, as it was a time when she said, "I was trying to force myself to be more 'boyish.'" After graduating from Bard College in 2010, Huxtable moved to New York to work as a legal assistant for the ACLU's Racial Justice Program. While establishing herself in the city, she found that "naturally, being here, I shed all of (my insecurities) slowly, but surely. All of those have come off. I still deal with it, but I like myself. I love myself."

Emerging in New York (2011–2014)

In addition to her position at the ACLU, Huxtable supported herself by DJing, hosting parties, making marijuana edibles, and various other jobs. According to a 2015 article published in Vogue, Huxtable once worked as "part of the catering staff for the New Museum’s 2011 Spring Gala honoring Gilbert & George," the same museum which would prominently feature her four years later during their triennial.

In 2013, Huxtable participated in the House of Ladosha's show Whole House Eats at Superchief Gallery. During her time as a DJ, Huxtable regularly integrated her poetry into DJ mixes. She also forayed into features, recording poetics on the song "Blood Oranges" from Le1f's mixtape Tree House and having her poetry included in the runway soundtrack for the Hood by Air Fall/Winter fashion show "10,000 Screaming Faggots" by Total Freedom.

While continuing her DJ work and party work, Huxtable also became a model. In 2014, she was featured on the fifth anniversary cover of C☆NDY magazine along with 13 other transgender women – Janet Mock, Carmen Carrera, Geena Rocero, Isis King, Gisele Alicea, Leyna Ramous, Dina Marie, Nina Poon, Yasmine Petty, Niki M'nray, Pêche Di, Carmen Xtravaganza and Laverne Cox. Huxtable has modeled for DKNY, Eckhaus Latta, and BCALLA for their Fall/Winter 2014 collections, Chromat for their Fall/Winter 2015 collection. She has most recently modeled for the French fashion house Kenzo.

In August 2014, Huxtable performed in the video for the Hercules and Love Affair song "My Offence" (2014). The video features excerpts of conversation with figures from the New York City gay scene like Honey Dijon, Huxtable, and Contessa Stuto. The band's primary member, Andrew Butler, described the song and its video as an examination of his "relationship to taboo words and the use of 'cunt' amongst NYC's gay community to relay flattery, empowerment and strength". Huxtable also is in the music videos Invitation to a Beheading, "Seducing the Beast" (2012) and New No Bra, Candy (2013).

Antwaun Sargent of Vice calls Juliana a "rising star... and LGBT icon in the New York art world."

New Museum Triennial and Present (2015–)

Huxtable was chosen by New Museum Triennial curators Lauren Cornell and artist Ryan Trecartin to present work in the 2015 Triennial Surround Audience. Huxtable was both the author of four works featured in the show, each an inkjet print from her series Universal Crop Tops For All The Self-Canonized Saints of Becoming. Huxtable was also the subject of work in the show. Fellow Triennial artist Frank Benson created a life-size sculpture of Huxtable, simply titled Juliana, that featured her entirely nude, reclined on a pedestal, and painted in iridescent colors resembling an oil slick. This sculpture, which opened the Triennial, and the use of one of Huxtable's prints for the show's website, garnered Huxtable a great deal of attention, with writer Mark Guiducci dubbing Huxtable the "Star of the New Museum Triennial". Huxtable was on the Season Two premiere of Ovation TV's web-based talk show, Touching the Art, hosted by fellow 2015 Triennial artist Casey Jane Ellison to discuss the show with artist K8 Hardy, and New Museum curator Shelley Fox Aarons.

In November 2015, Huxtable premiered her multi-media performance There Are Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed (2015) for the Performa15 biennial at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Described by the festival's organizers, Huxtable's performance considered "cyberspace as a twilight zone of precariousness and preservation, traversing closed servers, bounced URLs, and Google cache as human and digital characters".

Since the Triennial and Performa15, Huxtable has participated in multiple panels and lectures, including the Art Basel Miami salon "Transgender in the Mainstream" and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture's "Basqiat and Contemporary Queer Art." In 2016, Huxable headlined the opening night performance of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art Festival in Portland, Oregon.

Huxtable's recent work is also featured in the online collection at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Exhibitions and performances

Her visual and performance works have been presented at:

Discography