My name is Ceraun, pronounced (Sir-AHN) and I am a gender queer visual artist currently based out of DC. As a child, I used to get in trouble for acting out battles. In my imagination, I was in some far off land solving mysteries and fighting demons, when in reality I was sitting in the back of my math class. Creativity has been a part of my life ever since then but I never knew the correct outlet through which to express my ideas. During this time, my first venture was to be a novelist but I got 6 chapters into one novel and gave up. It was in college when I realized the best medium to express my ideas was through photography and film and now I am on a journey to tell the stories I wish I could have watched when I was younger.
I recently left my job at a digital advertising firm that I worked at for almost three years. While I learned a ton and met some amazing people, I was left exhausted and tired at the end of each day, which didn’t give me any time to make art. Now, instead of getting another job, I am taking this time to really focus on my art. While I have lived abroad in Amsterdam and seen some cities in Europe, there is so much more of the Earth I want to navigate. So, I thought that now would be great to see as much of the world as possible. I’ve never been content to live a repetitive lifestyle and part of that is why a 9-5 desk job was so uninteresting to me. I want to live my life exploring the world, meeting new people, and not knowing what I’m going to come across the next day.
An archive is defined as a “collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.” Archives are essentially sites of knowledge. We go to them to learn about people and places that have come before us. But so often the archives we learn from only care about white men. Rarely do archives contain or focus explicitly on those who are black, queer, and trans. I want to document my life and the ways in which I navigate it through the intersections of blackness, queerness, and gender transgression. To be honest, I’m really scared of what is on the horizon for me. I want to use this website as a medium to archive my fear, my joy, my progression, and my reflection and I’m excited to bring all of you on this journey with me.