TOURMALINE
Mary of Ill Fame, 2019–21 16mm film transferred to video, color, sound, 17:14 min. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from the Director’s Discretionary Fund in honor of Dina Helal, 2022.4
Tourmaline is an activist, artist, and writer whose practice confronts the historical erasure of Black, queer, and trans communities. Her film Mary of Ill Fame (2019–21) tells a fictional story around the life of Mary Jones (played by Rowin Amone), a Black trans woman who Tourmaline imagines living in the autonomous Black and Irish immigrant community of Seneca Village in New York in the 1830s, on the land occupied today by Central Park. Splicing between images of Jones in brutal confinement after stealing a man’s wallet and a gracious Seneca Village home, Tourmaline builds a fantasy space of power, freedom, and pleasure that the actual Jones deserved, reaching back in time to talk about the future, using the style of Black folktales to resurface Jones and bring her story back into view. A meticulous chronicler of Black queer and trans histories, Tourmaline researched Mary Jones’ life in the archives of New York. Her work as a community historian for New York drag performers demonstrates a fusion between art and social justice. As she has remarked, “This work is about reshaping what we know to be possible… Right now, people are paying attention to the question ‘What’s the world that we’re seeking to create? And who is coming along with us?’”
Tourmaline , Mary of Ill Fame , 2019–21, in Mountain / Time, Aspen Art Museum, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Chapter NY.
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