{B/qKC}:
a black queer archive

{B/qKC} is a Black queer digital archive educating the Kansas City community on the contributions of local Black LGBTQIA2S+ community members–in turn, liberating their histories from racism and homophobia-fueled erasure.

The project is transdisciplinary: combining archival work with journalism, magnetization recording + manipulation, printed media and Black radical politic.

Produced in volumes, Montalvo spends each year deeply researching, exhibiting and workshopping a specific aspect of Black queer Kansas City history.

The official website for {B/qKC} can be viewed at www.kansascitydefender.com/bqkc.

{B/qKC} will be going independent later this year.

VOLUMES

  • Volume_2

    2024. Multiple locations.
    Solo Exhibitions.


    Volume_2 launches {B/qKC} as its own standing digital archive and begins by telling 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.

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  • Miss/They Camaraderie

    2024. Charlotte Street.
    Group Exhibition

    “Miss/They Camaraderie 2024 was an immersive exhibition into the world of drag performance and Black pageantry where the artworks are the “beauty queens” and the exhibition, the stage.

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  • Volume_1

    2023. Multiple locations.
    Solo Exhibitions.

    Volume_1 was Montalvo's liberatory research and work into their local archives, namely the Gay and Lesbian Archives of Mid-America. Volume_1 consists of the long-form research and grounding that started it all.

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