Maria Silk

Maria Silk is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. Her dissertation project examines queer nightlife and cultural production in San Francisco in the second half of the 20th century. More broadly, Silk writes on performance, queer history, trans health, sexual cultures, and the countercultural and artistic legacies of San Francisco and the Bay Area, with a special focus on interview and oral history projects. Her work on these themes is published or forthcoming in BUTT, GLQ, SFMOMA’s Open Space, and Bloomsbury’s Women's Innovations in Theatre, Dance and Performance series. 

Silk is also an artist and choreographer whose performance and video works center on collectivity and friction within queer and trans life, as well as received narratives around queer history and identity. Her practice as both an artist and a researcher draws on 12 years of activity as a drag queen and DJ in San Francisco’s queer nightlife scene. Silk has exhibited and performed her work at local venues including the Berkeley Art Museum, the Cantor Center for the Arts, CounterPulse, Slash, and Southern Exposure as well as internationally at Fierce! Festival (Birmingham, UK), and Improspekcije (Zagreb, Croatia). Along with writer Brittany Newell, she co-directed HUSH-HUSH, an event series programming experimental performance by local queer and trans artists, from 2017 to 2020, and she continues to program dance and experimental performance as the director of Dizzying and the co-host of Angels and Juicy Fruit, two ongoing drag shows in San Francisco.