CNP Mobilization Director Featured in WUSSY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Charles Stephens
charles.stephens@counternarrative.org
February 28, 2018 – Atlanta, GA – The Counter Narrative Project (CNP) Atlanta-based Mobilization Director, Johnnie Ray Kornegay, III, has been featured among the South’s top queer artists in the third physical edition of WUSSY Magazine, a Southern LGBTQ multimedia platform. Kornegay and three of his selected photographic works are prominently featured in WUSSY's “Sex Issue” alongside over 30 other queer Southern artists. The edition, available now through WussyMag.com, serves as both Kornegay’s artistic debut in a print publication and the first time his work will have international exposure through the magazine’s global distribution channels.
“I’m thrilled at this opportunity to have my work seen and discussed by people around the world,” said Kornegay. “To have people consider how my work is specifically interrogating sex and sexuality in the Black leather community where our images are usually exaggerated and highly sexualized is important.”
Kornegay’s work both as an artist and advocate seeks to strike a balance between sexuality and sensuality in ways that restore humanity to Black bodies and balance to how those bodies and interests are portrayed. In addition to serving as a senior administrator for CNP, Kornegay is also the Founder & Artistic Director of Staticc Art & Life, LLC, an arts company with the passionate mission of “delivering beauty to the world.”
In addition to selling and showcasing his limited-edition artwork and apparel through his website, Staticc.com, Kornegay also has dutifully served as a Director and right-hand to the Executive Director of the Counter Narrative Project, Charles Stephens, on a number of CNP events and initiatives.
“It’s important that people know that even in my role at the Counter Narrative, I’m constantly creating, and given the necessary room to create,” says Kornegay. “It’s a very fortunate set-up for me.”
Balancing his art and activism, Kornegay most recently co-curated 2017 World AIDS Day events in Atlanta last December centering race, Black gay men and their experiences with HIV/AIDS while he also participated in a collaborative artistic residency at Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery in Atlanta for the “Disguises Welcomed Here” exhibition. Both presentations were immediate and highly emotional successes that resonated with Black gay men and their allies throughout the region.
It's precisely because of Kornegay’s impact in changing the narrative about Black gay men both locally and nationally (and now internationally) that he’s proven such a perfect fit for CNP and been instrumental in helping it thrive over its brief four-year history.
"Johnnie Kornegay is one of the most important artistic voices of our current moment,” said Executive Director Charles Stephens. “His work masterfully captures the full humanity of his subjects, a radial project for a black gay artist. We’re lucky to have him.”