Tracy Fenix

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 almost 10 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