3. Xadie James

TW: This piece contains flashing lights.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“Transmuting City'' uses paper and magazine cutouts of cityscapes and buildings. The image of a cityscape represents community and all the tiny ways and paths in which we are connected, how these paths veer and change to create a completely different place made of the same elements.

The use of colorful tissue and construction paper represents fragility, how things can change quickly and permanently. Gentrification is the displacement of long-time residents in urban areas with wealthier residents. This separates and causes deep harm to our community as a whole. As cities change, how can we fight for a better way to create and hold space for the people in our communities?

Vintage images from magazines elicit feelings of nostalgia and longing, while repurposing them gives them new life, much like how we take our skills and do something different when the unexpected happens. This living breathing transmuting cityscape projected onto concrete walls serves as a window to what happens behind walls of mortar and brick, the organism of community. This web of communities is ever changing and ever growing. Love is community interacting with itself.

ARTIST BIO

Xadie James (they/them) is a queer and non-binary, Denver based musician, composer, songwriter, animator, and director. They are a multi instrumentalist that specializes in double bass, electric bass, and drums but also plays piano, keys, cello, strings, guitar, and brass.

Their most recent musical performance act titled ‘meek’, is a subversive queer performance that uses sensors attached to drums to trigger samples of synthesizers and drum machines, while simultaneously singing distorted and effected vocals.

Xadie also performs double bass with the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra. They have been with the DPO since 2014. They teach strings at the afterschool music program El Sistema.

Xadie is a stop animation and rotoscope animation artist. They make music videos for their musical projects as well as others. They create nostalgic scenes using magazines, clay, dolls, paper, and other found materials.

You can find them in their home studio building sets, cutting up old magazines, playing piano, and staying up too late drinking tea.