Najja Moon
Bio
Najja Moon is a Miami based artist and cultural practitioner, born and raised in Durham, North Carolina. Her practice is centered on the idea that art is utilitarian. An amalgamation of practicalities that improve her life; design and language, cultural responsibility and community, her visual arts practice uses drawing and text to explore the intersections of queer identity, the body and movement, black culture and familiar relations both personal and communal.
Moon is the inaugural artist to be commissioned by the Bass Museum for their “New Monuments” program. She is also the winner of a 2020 Knight New Work Grant for her ongoing project “The Huddle is a Prayer Circle''. Other recent exhibitions, commissions and publications included: The Design Shop, 2021, Tile Blush (Miami): Time Sensitive, 2020, Spinello Projects (Miami); Dust Specks on the Sea, 2020, Little Haiti Cultural Center (Miami); SPRTS Issue 9, 2019, Endless Editions, NYABF @MoMA PS1 (New York); How to Patch a Leaky Roof, 2019, Commissioned by O, Miami (Miami); 2 & a possible, 2019, Supplement Projects x Arts.Black (Miami);
In 2015, She Co-Founded the BLCK family, a Miami based creative collective responsible for the installation of mobile performance art shows centered around culinary, visual, performing and social arts. She Co-Founded the former queer social club for womxn, This Girls lunchbox (2017-2019), that centered art as a convening point.
Statement
My drawings have served many purposes for me; they are a road map of my subconscious, the remnants of memories and lived experiences. I’m always trying to read them or perform them. With this work in particular I tried to think about the marks my body leaves behind. The shapes and poses I’ve made in times of pleasure or discomfort. Using my marks I made a 3-dimensional work that guides me back into those shapes. And for each work I intervened on, I thought about the marks as a larger text to manipulate, similar to the process of redacted poetry. This addition and reduction results in a wide range of new narratives and possibile new orientations to read the body.
