RJ ELDRIDGE Is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and educator.
A graduate of the University of South Florida’s graduate program in Africana Studies, where his studies focused on literature and critical theory, Eldridge has engaged widely on the role of the arts in constructing identity, and seeks to help expand the dimensions of contemporary discussion on the intersections between performance, history, race, ontology and myth.
His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vinyl, Apogee Journal, AFROPUNK, Obsidian, the Offing, Puerto Del Sol, Transition, wildness and others. He is a contributing essayist to The Whiskey of our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent (2017 Haymarket Books) edited by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff. His photography, visual and performance work has been exhibited at the Logan Center, Chicago Art Department, Hyde Park Arts Center, Arts Incubator, Galeria Bianconi and others. He made a national television debut in September 2013 as a performer in the NAACP Image-Award nominated series, Lexus Presents: Verses and Flow, and stars in the short film Akata.
His current projects include an ongoing photographic study and documentation of Party Noire, Chicago Reader's #1 dance party, and works in prose and in visual art that inquire about yearning and the Black mind in a shifting moment.
Photo by Jassie UO (2016)