An 80s baby born in New York and raised in the South, Taja Lindley currently lives in Tennessee working as the Founder of Colored Girls Hustle®️ - a shelter and sanctuary for her self-expression, a sacred portal and platform for her creative projects and collaborations. Her most recent production is the Black Women’s Dept. of Labor - a project and podcast about race, gender and the double entendre of labor - to work and to give birth.
Lindley is a memory worker, and a spirit-led interdisciplinary generative artist creating dynamic and iterative works designed to transform audiences and to shift narratives, culture and consciousness. She is inspired by the healing arts and metaphysical sciences which support her healing journey and inform the rituals of conceiving, developing and presenting her artwork. Click here to book a one-on-one astrology and/or tarot session with her.
She is most known for her performances, installations, films and podcasting addressing state sanctioned violence, reproductive freedom, economic sovereignty, bodily autonomy and our relationship with the past. Her work is often immersive, participatory, socially engaged, political and autobiographical. Her mediums (to date) include film, memory, sound, dance/movement, text, personal archives, storytelling and discarded materials.
Her artwork has been featured at places like Spring/Break Art Show, Brooklyn Museum, Philbrook Museum, New York Live Arts, the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, Miami Art Week, House of Yes, Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), the Gallatin Arts Festival at New York University, WOW Café Theater, La Mama Theater, in living rooms, classrooms, conferences and public spaces. She has received coverage in the New York Times, VICE, ELLE, Blouin Art Info, Art Zealous, Artnet News, ARTSY and more.
Her 2017 residency at Dixon Place Theater culminated in the world premiere of her one-woman show "The Bag Lady Manifesta" and has been presented at museums, galleries, theaters, universities, cultural centers and performance festivals nationwide. After her self-produced tour, she debuted her first solo exhibition "Re-Membering is the Responsibility of the Living" with three site specific iterations in Austin, Philadelphia, and Houston.
In 2019 she was the inaugural Public Artist in Residence with the NYC Health Department and a 2020 A Blade of Grass Fellow working on a socially-engaged project to address the Black maternal health crisis in New York City. This work, alongside her longstanding and unwavering commitment to reproductive justice, led to her performance film "Pump & Feed" and a series of labor invoices addressing the under- and uncompensated labor of Black women.
In addition to being an artist, Lindley has been actively engaged in social movements as a cultural worker, healer, consultant, facilitator, and employee. For two decades she has successfully worked with non-profits, community based organizations, research institutes and government on policies and programming that impact women and girls, communities of color, low/no/fixed-income families, queer people, youth and immigrants. As a full-spectrum doula, she has supported hundreds of people having abortions and giving birth. She received her B.A. from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she designed her own major, concentrating in public policy and knowledge production with a focus on health and women of color.
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