Khaleb Brooks

Khaleb Brooks is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and writer exploring blackness, transness and collective memory. By meshing the black queer figure with surreal environments in paintings, using printmaking to question the politics of desire and entering transcendental states in performance they force their audience to confront the literal and social death of black peοple globally.

Prior to working as an artist full time, Khaleb was an international development practitioner working with the United Nations and a multitude of NGOs throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia. They consistently seek innovative ways to bring their passion for social justice to the creative sector. Khaleb, originally from Chicago is inspired by the perseverance of black families in overcoming poverty, addiction, abuse and gang violence as well as their own experiences of being transgender.

Khaleb Brooks is a participant of the Emergency Fellowships program of Onassis AiR 2020-21 and of the Tailor-made Fellowships program 2022-23.

Last year, I completed a yearlong artist residency at Tate Modern, where I led weekly youth workshops and created work around the transatlantic slave trade. In these workshops I not only learned from the vast collection, but I was also able to see the many gaps in my own knowledge. I know what happened during the Atlantic slave trade, but do I know the personal narratives? Do I understand generational memory? What is the transgender history of the Atlantic slave trade? And how may I better engage with African diasporic cοmmunities outside the Western countries? This work has led to a series of paintings that use historic objects and surrealism to retell history.

I am now pursuing a 6-month residency at the International Slavery Museum (ISM) in Liverpool, UK. The museum's collection offers an in-depth look at historical objects and narratives that are integral to my practice.

My goal is to develop storytelling aspects within my work that will allow for educational engagement and contribute to future youth workshops as well as offer a retelling of history by bringing individual narratives to life.

I intend to discuss the resilience and presence of queer and transgender identities in these histories. While I fear these stories may be few and far between, what excites me, is the opportunity to create them and to inform the current gap in research around black trans/queer history.