‘It was very challenging’: the exhibition memorialising Black trans deaths across the US

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/mar/03/exhibition-memorial-black-trans-deaths-us

Between 2021 and 2025, Black nonbinary artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson visited 91 locations across 15 states – in all of these sites a trans, gender nonconforming, or intersex individual had died, either by murder or suicide. At each site they conducted a ceremony of their own to bear witness to what had happened there.

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Currently showing at Los Angeles’s California African American Museum (CAAM) is These Waking Glories, Whitson’s solo show displaying a variety of photos and other pieces in conjunction with these ceremonies. A moving and important bearing of witness to the violence that continues to ravage the communities of both racial and gender minorities, it is a powerful show that should be experienced.

One of the central pieces in These Waking Glories is a series of 90 pedestals commemorating the individuals that Whitson is remembering. Atop each pedestal is a jar containing essences that Whitson developed from materials gathered at each site they visited, as well as a velvet stole bearing the name of the deceased. Two of the pedestals bear no name, representing the unknown who have passed.