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For inquiries, you can contact me at gchong@umass.edu.

I am currently writing a dissertation entitled, "Tun Yuh Hand Mek Fashion: Dancehall Fashion as Resistance in Jamaica and the Caribbean Diaspora,” which examines how women use elements of Jamaican dancehall fashion to protest intersectional inequalities of racism, classism, sexism, etc. More specifically, I argue that Jamaican dancehall fashion is a historical palimpsest that speaks to women’s resistance, their self-fashioning against social death, and the formation of social networks and labours of care. I analyze how enslaved women in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Jamaica engage in everyday resistances through the styling and exchange of clothing. My project is based on the question: “What are the textile histories embedded in dancehall fashion?” Research creation is the main methodology for this dissertation. Research creation (also known as artistic research) is defined by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as “an approach to research that combines academic and research practices and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation. This method is critically informed by research found within various art forms.” I was first introduced to the term by Zalika U. Ibaorimi, a multidisciplinary artist and doctoral candidate at UT Austin who showcased her piece, “Jawn Theory” which is part of a three-part auto-ethnographic performance on the Black communal logic of relationality and absence. This work was shared at the “The Art of Black Sexual Ecologies” panel by the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. By centring clothing and garmenting , I plan to think about various themes such as the relationship between Carnival and Jonkonnu; Afro-Asian intimacies and collaborations in dancehall; and dancehall fashion and its relationship to dance and music. Art installations of my own creation will be the focal points of this dissertation through which I plan to articulate these themes and explorations. I am also the current editorial assistant for sx salon: a small axe literary platform. sx salon is a digital forum for innovative critical and creative explorations of Caribbean literature, broadly defined. We publish literary discussions, interviews with writers, reviews of new publications (creative and scholarly), and poetry and prose by Caribbean writers.

I consider myself a mixed media artist. Currently, I am interested in garmenting through which I (re)use and (re)make clothing as a critical tool to think through form and function, textile accessibility, gender, and sexuality.

I think of my work as a sort of bricolage. It is not solely one thing, but many things inspired by the creativity of others. I deeply admire the artistic works of Kevin Adonis Browne, Andrea Chung, Solange Govia, Kadine Lindsay, Ebony G. Patterson, and L'Antointte Stines. Scholars like Tao Leigh Goffe, Sonjah Stanley Niaah, and Bibi Bakare-Yusuf greatly influence my research interests.