Kinfolk: Portals of Remembrance
Overview
A collaboration with pioneering digital archive and platform Kinfolk Tech Foundation, Portals of Remembrance reimagined the New York City AIDS Memorial as a dynamic, interactive site of memory, technological innovation, and empowerment. Utilizing cutting-edge augmented reality (AR), the year-long outdoor exhibition activated three virtual monuments created by four renowned contemporary artists: Derek Fordjour, Jacolby Satterwhite, and the collaborative duo Tourmaline & Egyptt LaBeija, set to an immersive score by Geo Wyex.
Project Context & Curatorial Role
As Commissioner and Producer, I led the institutional partnership with Kinfolk to bring this groundbreaking AR exhibition to the Memorial’s physical site, centering the stories, leadership, and legacies of Black, Brown, trans, and queer figures historically excluded from dominant HIV/AIDS narratives.
Augmented Reality as Public Monument
Kinfolk’s spatial computing platform allowed visitors at the Memorial to use their smartphones or tablets to unlock large-scale, digitally rendered monuments anchored directly to the physical canopy and plaza. By layering immersive 3D sculpture, performance, and digital archives over physical space, the project expanded traditional concepts of public monumentality and access.
Virtual Commissions
Derek Fordjour – CellularChaser
Drawing from his jockey imagery, Fordjour’s AR monument contrasts the forward-leaning posture of a jockey with the stationary motion of a rocking horse to explore themes of stalled progress, hypervisibility, and disappearance. The work highlights the enduring impact of the epidemic—particularly on African Americans, who account for nearly 40% of new HIV infections—while reflecting on broader national tensions between social advancement and regressive systemic erasure.
Egyptt LaBeija & Tourmaline (Score by Geo Wyex) – Atlantic is a Sea of Bones
Expanding on themes from Tourmaline’s film and LaBeija’s legendary background, this collaboration uses ocean motifs, spatial audio storytelling, and LaBeija’s iconic movements to construct a portal for Black trans resilience. Leveraging AR to render the unseen visible, the work challenges historical erasure, honoring those who led grassroots survival networks and celebrating Black trans legacies as acts of creative imagination.
Jacolby Satterwhite – You Make Me Feel Mighty Real
A tribute to disco icon and trailblazer Sylvester, Satterwhite’s virtual sculpture depicts the late musician as a shimmering Byzantine-style religious icon. Elevating Sylvester to the status of a patron saint of queer resilience and liberation, the digital monument reclaims traditional languages of divinity to celebrate unapologetic Black queer joy, defiance, and immortality in the face of the epidemic's immense loss.
Role: Commissioner/Producer
With Kinfolk Tech Foundation
Date: May 17, 2025—April 30, 2026
Location: New York City AIDS Memorial, New York, NY
Artists: Derek Fordjour, Jacolby Satterwhite, Tourmaline & Egyptt LaBeija, with a score by Geo Wyex
