Photo by mom at Olympic National Park, 2021.
Native Tejana Archivist, Curator & Land Steward (They/she)
Master in Urban Planning & MA in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere at University of Southern California, May 2023.
B.A Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, 2015.
Tracy Fenix (they/she) is a queer native Tejana archivist, curator and ecological urban planner. They were born and raised in El Paso / rural west Texas (Mescalero Apache, Tigua, & Suma territories) who resides permanently in Queens, NY and works itinerantly in Los Angeles and the broader southwest around land-based projects for their Mud Kin Mapping Project. Fenix is a native Tejana curator focused on the intersection between public art, environmental urban planning, and archives with over 8 years of cultural leadership expertise.
They center deep care and intergenerational trauma healing through responsive listening, transparency and nourishing eco-sensual relationships to people, places and shared collective public knowledge. They have stewarded/ managed public gardens in NYC and CA collectively for over 6 years.
Tracy recently worked as the Exhibitions Project Manager at the California African American Museum (CAAM) and formerly for Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Public Arts Team. Fenix was a Summer Fellow at Times Square Alliance and worked as the Artist Engagement & Archive Manager at Visual AIDS for over three years. While at Visual AIDS, Fenix supported local, national and international Artist+ Members and estates with their physical archives and digital collections represented in the Artist+ Registry and the Archive Project. They led the the archival and curatorial direction of Visual AIDS Andrew W. Mellon Community-based Archives Grant and initiated “The Body as an Archive,” an oral history project that preserves the legacies of long-term survivors and BIPOC artists.
TALKS | SYMPOSIUMS | PRESENTATIONS
“Live Artists Live” keynote talk with Joy Harjo | USC Roski Mateo | Los Angeles, CA | October 2022
“Days of Rage” talk | Culture Mapping Conference | New York University | New York, NY | April 2022
“Biomigrations” Conference talk on “Archiving Plant Memories: Preserving BIPOC Sovereignty in Garden Spaces, University of California, Berkeley | virtual talk | April 2021
Curator talk, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) | virtual talk | March 2021
“From the Margins: Queer Archives | New York Public Library | Stephen A. Schwarzman Building | NY, NY | 2019
“Caretaking in the Archive” The LGBT Center | New York, NY | October 2018
FELLOWSHIPS & COMMITTEES
A&L Berg Foundation Inaugural Early Stage Arts Professional (ESAP) Fellowship | 2024
ONE Institute’s “CIRCA” Steering Committee | Los Angeles, CA | 2023
The NYC LGBT Archive Advisory Committee | New York, NY | 2021–2024
Leadership Institute Fellowship, National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures | 2019
Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellow, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute | 2018
Program Fellow, The Art and Law Program | New York, NY | 2018