{B/qKC}: The Archive Launch Party - Nasir Anthony Montalvo

The BlaqBox
March 1, 2024
Solo Exhibition

On March 1st, 2024, Montalvo hosted a Launch Party for the archive–which sold over 180 tickets weeks in advance of the launch. The Launch Party launched {B/qKC} as its own standing, community-based archive, and previewed its “Volume_2” exhibits (whereas Volume_1 was Montalvo’s initial research into their local archives).

Volume_2 specifically tells the story of Soakie’s: a sandwich shop in Downtown Kansas City that, through an unlikely partnership between the Italian mob and two Black gay men, would become a booming Black gay nightclub from 1993 – 2004. A dazzling display of Kansas City’s rich ballroom culture, Black queer camaraderie and chosen family, the inaugural Gary Carrington, Tisha Taylor and Starla Carr collections of {B/qKC}–each named after their eponymous shareholder–tell their own stories of this once safe space.

Curatorial Statement

@1800nasi: “what if the Internet is our only chance at building an everlasting, sacred safe place?

as the World suffers famine, war, and political strife, the 21st century’s technological advancements have created new ways to engage with, or escape from, this apocalypse.

Nasir Anthony Montalvo (b. 1999, Kissimmee, Florida) pursues both with {B/qKC}. Born out of a frustration with the lack of Black queer spaces in Kansas City, {B/qKC} initially began as a project focused on researching the prevalence of Black queers in Kansas City through deep-diving local archival institutions. And after a years-long worth of work and success, Montalvo more deeply understood the need to “liberate” Black queerness from the physical plane–where materials are stolen and sold for profit; or actively erased in furthering American indoctrination.

Montalvo contends with this modern-day subjugation by utilizing the digital. Interpolating their previous works and personal pedagogies in abolition, radical protest, accessible design and community organizing, Montalvo suggests {B/qKC} is a tool in the journey towards Black liberation. Challenging modern-day archives and their centerings of ownership, {B/qKC} instead places people at the center: creating an innovative system of co-ownership with its inaugural archive donors–namely by utilizing digital reproductions of material rather than originals–and ensuring audiences can, first, easily access these histories, and, then, deal harshly with the realities presented.

This exhibition is part of the second volume of {B/qKC}: launching itself as a standing, digital archive and beginning by telling the story of Soakie’s, a former Black gay bar in Downtown Kansas City from 1993 – 2004.

Now in the 20th year since Soakie’s was shut down by Cordish Companies, the development company behind Kansas City’s Power & Light District, this exhibition asks audiences to engage with analog media, and to remember (or learn) about the Black queer legends who have endured all to make current life possible.

But above all, {B/qKC} laments the need to build a Black queer “Heaven”–that is, a place for Black queers beyond the physical realm.

And, dually, a Heaven whose Gates actively educate, challenge, storytell, pay homage, repair, destroy, and build anew.”