Biography

Cory D. Perry (b. 1989) is an internationally recognized multimedia and performance folk artist. Perry’s projects consist of quilted, hand-beaded textiles that function as wearable objects for performances. These wearable objects are made from donated textiles, beads, and photographic images that serve to conceal, heal, and protect Black/queer space by conjuring a sacred space for queer Black folks to exist freely. They are a Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate from The University of Arkansas School of Art and attended the Post-baccalaureate program in Sculpture and Museum Research at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. Perry received their Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Art, Theory, Practice department at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. They are also a recipient of the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship (2019) and the Sexualities Project at Northwestern University Fellowship (2022). They were an honorary international artist for Chale Wote Performance Art Festival in Accra, Ghana (2019), and A participant artist for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (2023) where they created and performed "QueerBlackSunshine'' a meditative protest on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Perry’s projects have shown at the South Side Community Arts Center (Chicago); Arning Gallery (Houston); Smithsonian Institution (D.C.); Form and Concept Gallery (Santa Fe, NM); KNUST (Accra, Ghana); among many others.

Artist Statement:

The work I create shifts between spatial inheritance and bodily movement, utilizing found textiles as a medium to navigate this dynamic. Each project is a progression of my research, practice, and processes that oscillate on the thin line between abstraction and figuration. The textile linguistics that I use explores how spatial inheritance is accessed, preserved, and (re)imagined through the intertwining of quilted clothing, intimate snap-shots, and movement. Drawing on Southern Afro-diasporic textile practices of quilting, often I’m exploring the juxtaposition of Black-Queer grief, joy, and belonging. My process involves combining second-hand textiles and deconstructed clothing given to me by Black/queer people, whose voices have been historically underrepresented across the South. I pay homage to the Ozark region’s traditions of quilting, on the native lands of the Osage, Quapaw, and Caddo tribes. These place-keeping performances become active efforts at maintaining histories that belong to me, (re)claiming what an archiving process and mode can be.  I’m critically engaging with quotidian and gendered gestures of homemaking to reflect on the ways that queer people in the South build relationships and foster collectivity, despite the ruptures and ephemerality of these spaces caused by harmful societal reactions attempting to stifle our existence.