McCraven’s art unapologetically engages with Blackness and queerness and holds reverence for their Hip Hop theater roots and practice.

Their work is focused on collaboration and intersectionality, building relationships, and having conversations in spaces that solidify and amplify the experiences inherent in brownness and queerness and humanness. The tradition of relational aesthetics; the relationships themselves; the establishment of commonality; these are the purpose of the work, rather than the notion of product. This process serves to perform the action of overcoming difference as a matter of course, rather than as a side benefit to creation.

McCraven believes “It’s human nature to take on many physical forms and behaviors throughout our journey in life. I am a living representation of the many personalities that I have created to sustain me. I find joy in discovering identity, challenging gender norms, and creating relationships that encourage positive non-conforming behaviors. Being confined to binary standards has limited my imagination, and I have decided to no longer wonder what I could be without those limitations, but rather to discover who I am as I refused to be boxed.”

DW McCraven currently lives and works in Western Massachusetts.