Sage Ni’Ja Whitson – Dance/USA Artist Fellow

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Image Description: Whitson, a Black dark brown-skinned transgender person with long locs looks directly into the camera lens with a slight smirk and chin lifted. They are wearing a wide-brim fedora and an all black garment with zippers on the sleeve. One of Whitson's arms is across their torso, the other lifted in a loose fist just under their chin. Photo by Ryan Landell.

Sage Ni’Ja Whitson

they/them

Riverside, CA | Serrano, Luiseno, Tonga, Cahuilla

Sage Ni’Ja Whitson is a Queer & Transgender artist who conjures across media. Whitson’s anti-disciplinary constellation of art has received international awards and recognition, including a DAAD Visual Arts Award, Creative Capital Award, two Bessie Awards, and a United States Artist Fellowship. Via The Unarrival Experiments, Whitson’s multi-form epic on dark matter and dark energy, they exemplify a critical intersection of the sacred and conceptual in science, technology, art, ceremony, and text. Whitson’s project commissions include the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the California African American Museum, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, New York Live Arts, and festival commissions Tanzkongress, BAM Next Wave Art, and the CCA Biennale. Whitson is currently a full professor at the University of California, Riverside, where they served as the inaugural chair of Black Study from 2023-2025. Whitson is the great-grandchild of a root worker and a proud legacy bearer, ritual leader, and practitioner of familial and ancestral Spiritual traditions. They are the conductor and ritual archivist of Illumination Catalogue, a national, site-specific ceremony practice honoring transcestors lost to violence and the stories of Black Transgender, Intersex, and Gender Nonconforming peoples across Turtle Island.

Learn more about Sage Ni’Ja Whitson:

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Image Description: Whitson, a Black dark brown-skinned transgender person with long locs crouches down and reaches a gloved hand forward toward the camera picking up something on the ground, holding a brown paper bag in the other. They are outside at a railroad track and wearing all white and a wide-brimmed fedora. Photo by Yaeli Mozelle Galdamez.
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Image Description: Whitson, a Black dark brown-skinned transgender person with long locs on the ground inside a very dark art gallery wearing dark colors. They are draped in a bright, lighted cord with a part of it held between their lips. Photo by Maria Baranova.
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Image Description: Whitson, a Black dark brown-skinned transgender person with long locs has their back to the camera and hands reaching out to either side in mid dialogue. A semi circle of mostly Black and Brown femmes and women face the camera focusing on Whitson attentively. Photo by Diá Buì.

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