The main goal of my project is to highlight Queer artists across the Caribbean diaspora and examine how their art is connected to activism. My main focus was to identify the connections between identity, activism, and art, specifically with photography. Some of my research questions are: How do these artists define themselves? What is the role of their identity in their art? How do these artists use their art as a form of activism? How do they use their art as a form of representation? What can we learn from the creative self-expression in marginalized communities and their efforts to create social change? 

Initially, I wanted to research the activist contributions of Queer Caribbeans in the NYC area during LGBTQIA+ movements. However, I shifted my research focus to analyzing the connections between art and activism by Queer Caribbean artists. As a queer Caribbean person, I have already known several Queer Caribbean artists on social media platforms such as Mia Vasquez on Instagram. On the other hand, I was on a quest to find more Queer Caribbean artists through platforms such as Google scholar, Jstor, and Google search. From there, I came across The Small Axe project “Caribbean Queer Visualities” by Angelique V. Nixon, who wrote an article on Nadia Huggins's visual art (Nixon, 2017). Nadia Huggins and Mia Vasquez both were excellent examples of the Queer Caribbean artists I wanted to include in my project. 

I followed the same steps with the research component of the 1980’s Aid Epidemic portion. Some of the credible platforms that were mentioned in my literature review are the African American Intellectual History Society, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum, American Journal of Public Health, and the Center for Diseace Control and Prevention (CDC). The Brooklyn Museum held archival information on the SILENCE=DEATH logo, which is the main logo art I mention in my project. 

After more research on these platforms, I found artists' reviews, which included anedotes with each artist. In addition, I came across each artist’s personal websites where they both include statements and descriptions of their artwork. From this information, I was able to gather the necessary key factors that adhered to my research objectives and questions. Another goal of mine was to assure that I followed ethical procedures in the art world. Therefore, I contacted each artist and asked for permission to use their artwork. 

The main digital tool I used was Scalar, an open-source, web-based publishing source software from the University of Southern California’s Alliance for Networking Visual Culture. Scalar was an excellent platform to include multi-media publications and plenty of metadata options to credit the media I use, which were important factors for me . Another important digital tool used was Zotero, a free and open-source reference management to organize and create bibliographic data.