Meet Beaux Hardin

Artform: Poetry and Spoken Word
Issues addressed in artwork: intersectionality with race, gender and sexuality

Beaux Hardin, 20, of Lexington, is a Spoken Word artist whose work explores the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality through topics including the Black Queer experience, the American Black Arts Movement, La Negritude Movement, and Black pride, joy, and celebration. Hardin published a chapbook titled “Black Que(e)ries” with ten poems in English and ten poems in French. The chapbook derived from their research exploring how poets of the American Black Arts movement (the literary area in the Civil Rights Movement) and from La Negritude movement in North Africa, use their colonized language to express their culture and identity; to uplift themselves as a part of international “Black Pride” and then to exercise what was learned.

Beaux’s work looks at the past, present, and future of movements within the Black community and especially within the Black Queer community. They write about their own experiences within the context of this long history. They bring to light the unique experiences and challenges faced by individuals who navigate multiple, intersecting forms of oppression, addressing the way racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination intersect and compound each other.

Beaux used two languages in the creation of this work. They studied a variety of Black French poets and their writing from the La Negritude movement, specifically examining slang and nontraditional French. And conversely, Beaux looked at Black poets from the American Black Arts movement with African American Vernacular literature. From there, Beaux compared and analyzed similarities between the two to see what connects a people across an ocean.

Beaux says of their work, “I love to create activist poetry and spoken word, almost rap, about Black experience as a queer individual. The writing is influenced by Black Arts movement writing. In my work I challenge the viewer to see my perspective, and the perspective of other marginalized communities to challenge their predetermined biases and unconscious thought/privilege. My writing, my work, is to voice the Black queer experience and to generate money from Black voices to go back to the Black community to further education. I’m working towards making education accessible for everyone; being able to read and write should not be a privilege but a right.”

One of the aims in publishing the chapbook is to have money generated from Black voices to go back to the Black community; all proceeds will go to North African organizations that support and advocate for black education like the “Morocco Foundation” and an American organization that funds, supports and advocates for black education like NABSE.

Click here to purchase the chapbook.

How to connect with Beaux:
Instagram: beaux._hardin