CRUISING THE BORDERLANDS

This ethnographic and interview-based study explores how queer Latinx lowriders create community through art, such as The Q Sides, an exhibition of photographs by Vero Majano, Kari Orvik, and DJ Brown Amy. Both lowrider culture and the queer Latinx community are marginalized communities that are often silenced, ignored, and not included in historical preservation or well documented. Lowrider culture and the queer Latinx community have largely been explored separately, such as ethnographer Ben Chappell and interdisciplinary scholar Michael Hames-García. My Senior Independent Study project examines the unique intersection of the queer Latinx experience in lowrider culture in the context of women of color feminist theory. My study employs activist scholarship and collaborative ethnographic methods to document the experience of the queer Latinx lowrider participants in The Q-Sides. My study highlights the ways that queer Latinx lowriders create space for their narrative through community dialogues and claiming their narrative in lowrider culture through The Q-Sides photography series.