Exodus Crooks

Exodus Crooks is undertaking a one-year research project exploring the support structures available for Black Trans people in the UK.

Exodus Crooks is a British-Jamaican multidisciplinary artist and educator interested in self-determination and how it is steered by religion and spirituality. Informed by a fractious domestic life, their practice is autoethnographic and exists in the orbit of their educational role, where they work to reimagine Western pedagogy. Their art is often research-focused and follows the lead of the many radical Caribbean artists and thinkers exploring Indigenous ways of living.

Exodus is currently experimenting with gardening, text, moving image and installation to better understand Queer Indigenous thought and tend to the breaks that occur in the human experience.

Parable of the Sower is a 1993 speculative fiction novel by American novelist Octavia E. Butler set in a post-apocalyptic Earth heavily affected by climate change and social inequality. During their year-long research project, Exodus is using the motif of the emergency survival pack in Parable of the Sower as a springboard to consider tangible and intangible support structures for Black Trans survival, including mutual aid, healthcare, housing and community building. 

Exodus’ research into the idea of a Black Trans ‘survival pack’ considers the etymology of the word tender, which comes from the Latin ‘tendere’ and means ‘to stretch’. They undertake sculptural experiments with materials that they consider to hold tension, those that are tender or those that start out flexible but become rigid as they dry, like pomegranate skin. These experiments reflect their exploration of the contradictions they identify with Black Trans life - between moments of survival and moments of tenderness.

Working with partners and participants, Exodus will host creative research conversations, focus groups and events which will inform and impact the wider programme.