Dawnia Darkstone
The queer queen of glitch art
“Glitch is an ever-evolving art form and, in that way, it’s truly exciting.”
Dawnia Darkstone also goes by Letsglitchit – and the name perfectly sums up her art. She truly is the queen of glitch. Since the early 2010s, she’s made all sorts of kaleidoscopic visuals by hacking different tools and programmes. “I’m always looking forward to new technologies to manipulate and break'', she says. Darkstone has glitched video, sound, print media and even embroidery. She also makes zines and paints with solvents to make trippy abstract graphics. Even though her work is incredibly varied, it always has a punk DIY early internet feel. In 2016, Darkstone also started using AI to c...
Dawnia Darkstone also goes by Letsglitchit – and the name perfectly sums up her art. She truly is the queen of glitch. Since the early 2010s, she’s made all sorts of kaleidoscopic visuals by hacking different tools and programmes. “I’m always looking forward to new technologies to manipulate and break'', she says. Darkstone has glitched video, sound, print media and even embroidery. She also makes zines and paints with solvents to make trippy abstract graphics. Even though her work is incredibly varied, it always has a punk DIY early internet feel. In 2016, Darkstone also started using AI to create works – so it’s fair to say she’s always been ahead of her time.
In her own words, Darkstone is “trans and gay af”. It’s really affirming to have trans representation in the NFT space and Darkstone celebrates herself and her community across social media. Like many queer artists, Darkstone’s work is not defined by her identity. But there is a beautiful crossover between queerness and glitch. Glitch art corrupts technology and turns it into beauty, while queerness corrupts hetronormative life and turns it into beauty too. “Corruption is not confined to the physical,” says Darkstone. “It seeps, it bleeds into the digital, our modern immortality exposed as illusion. The skull flickers succumbs to the inevitable glitch”.
Dawnia Darkstone (she/they) is an American artist born in 1990 who lives and works in Mississippi.
Darkstone is a co-administrator and curator of Glitch Artists Collective and she supports many trans and non-binary artists in the NFT space. She also encourages people to get into glitch art by sharing her personal notes on her glitch art techniques and secrets.
In 2023, Darkstone embarked on a new chapter as a curator. She was asked to curate Glitch: Beyond Binary for Sotheby's and the glitch art show at NFT Rome for SuperChiefNFT.
