Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordi Phi.
Jordi, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was a seedling when I arrived to Los Angeles — transplanted via San Jose, so Cali born and raised.
I came with my single mother to pursue her dream of acting in the big city accompanying her to many auditions. It was during this time of witnessing my artist mother hone her skills that I said: “I wanna do that too.” I was a very theatrical only child (I had to keep myself entertained). She enrolled me in a conservatory program called Amazing Grace Conservatory, and there began my journey of learning and expanding with my artistic self.
To learn singing, dancing, and acting surrounded by black and brown students and teachers is something I have never been able to experience quite the same. It was a special kind of magic that set the stage for my journey in the arts. I continued my education at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and that was a whole other world within itself.
A fishbowl of sorts it was a semi-diverse small class of 25 students that very much taught us the ways of CMU. It was here that I was able to expand, forced to break, practiced deep self-care, and discovered who I was or at least who I wanted to be before I jumped out of the fishbowl in hopes to land in the ocean instead of the toilet GOOD GODDESS! I’m still healing. If anything they prepared me deeply for the lessons I was planning to face very intimately after graduation.
Lessons of branding, institutionalized racism, heteronormativity, stereotypes, the list continues to reveal itself to me over the years. And it was truly these past three years that I faced the deep programming I had been exposed to since I was very young. I examined my place in this industry, an industry I grew up in since I was seven years old. What did I have to offer? I’ve booked many different gigs that allowed me to explore myself deeper.
Glee, Best Buy national commercial, Toyota, understudying Choir Boy at the Geffen, a YouTube RED series playing a flamboyant triple threat. All parts of myself asking the question who am I? What do I want? What do I have to give? I relied heavily on my self-care practices to search for these answers. I found wounds I had not been aware of. Wounds around what a queer person must act like.
Be like, in a world that still casts straight people to play these roles. Wounds that had every black person that looked like me auditioning for the same very few black roles being cast in this city. I looked at myself and the pain I felt and realized truths that had been stuffed deep down in those cuts of mine. I was able to learn about myself as a nonbinary person.
Someone whose story has been so quieted throughout history that I didn’t even know about it until someone asked what pronouns I wanted to be called. I had a choice? It was that remembrance of choice that allowed me to shift my identity towards more affirming environments. I am healing myself. I was able to share my own practices with others and be affirmed as a healer.
And I’ve been integrating the intention of healing in my art as well. It has been very new that I have described myself as a ceremonial artist. And the projects I’ve worked on recently have invited me to explore this part of myself in profound ways.
Has it been a smooth road?
I’ve had many struggles. One thing I’ve learned is that the only thing in life that is constant is change. So there have been many ups and downs. A challenge I first experienced was understanding my life in a single parent household.
My mother had me when she was 18 and is very much a Gemini whirlwind super mom who just makes magic happen. The kind of person that can be two places at once do two things at the same time. Shortly after we moved to Los Angeles, she found a relationship that had many lessons. So I had a second father to learn from.
In this space, my feminine identity and tendencies felt like a burden when I was being taught how to be a man, who played football, called everyone sir or mam, never told a lie. I wrote a more in-depth journey of realizing my true self in tough environments in an essay called Decolonizing my Gender that I’ll attach here.
It wasn’t until they divorced and we lived on our own for the first time that I was forced to see the struggles one person raising a child on their own had to triumph over. I had a great support system in the family, visited my grandparents every summer, and didn’t necessarily WANT much.
But I started to notice an economic difference between my classmates and I when there was a field trip that I didn’t tell my mother about until last minute. It cost $20 dollars, and she couldn’t pay for it. She cried and told me she needed time to prepare for these things. We rarely talked about money before or after that, but that was all the information I needed to understand our situation.
I stayed at school while my class went to a fair and I think shot arrows or something. I was accepted on a scholarship at a college prep school, so there were many trips that I didn’t go on that other privileged folks in my class did. There was a difference in lifestyle that I was made aware of. I wasn’t consciously aware of any negative effects because I had other things that took more of my energy to process.
Navigating my queerness has been a large source of trauma especially in environments that aren’t supportive. I use queer as a blanket term because honestly, my sexuality could care less what genitals you have or how you identify, so even though many people assume I’m gay because they also assume I’m a man I am very much pansexual. Hit me up. Lol.
There were no other queer people in my family that I could talk to, the church I grew up in celebrated when formerly gay men came onstage to tell about the power of prayer to convert their sinful ways and start heteronormative families, and my school didn’t do any better not making space for anyone other than straight people. I got really good at keeping secrets and lying.
I questioned my self-worth, at 13, I began having sexual relationships with men more than twice my age, my identity was very much tied with the value of my sexual energy. I was living two lives. A very smiley, bubbly, outgoing, enthusiastic Jordan hung out during the day, and by night a secretive, highly sexual, manipulative, emotionally pained Jordan came out to be seen.
I loved them both, but I felt very unseen and unheard by the folks that loved me. After close family found out what I was doing not much healing took place. I was very stubborn. Christianity was the main focus for any therapy or miraculous conversion to take place, so there were many blocks I had. I think one of the most healing things my mom made me do was write a page in my journal every day for a year.
I got out a lot of anger and rage and sadness during that time. I tried reading it two years ago and couldn’t so I burned it. Self-healing became a very intimate practice. I strayed away from everything and held onto myself more than I ever had. Once I moved to Pittsburgh, I was able to reinvent myself and re-examine what fills me with joy and self-love.
These early challenges around identity made me question labels especially popularized ones. I looked more into the identities that have been marginalized or demonized within myself. Now the sexually liberated, black as fuck, genderqueer, galactic shaman Jordi is remembering how to be and has transformed the pain of her past as fuel for the present future.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I’m going to be as specific as possible, but I preface this divine answer with a lil bit about my work. I am complex. Renaissance. I have many likes. I am very good at many different things. Multitalented. I describe my work/career as being in a kitchen with pots on each burner and things cooking in the oven at the same time. As a person living in this generation especially as an artist I feel it’s the best to be open to multiple sources of income that allow me to utilize my skills in a powerful way.
The three main focuses on my work life have been: Art, Childcare, and Healing. My artistic self has been exercising and growing from a very young age. Visually, film and photography are the main mediums I use. I dance, sing, and act and integrate these skills to some degree in most of my work as well. I write also, so my projects recently have included my poetry and vocalizings. I have writings being published through queer POC centered NORM Zine LA and I self-published my own short story inner children’s audiobook called Stone Phoenix.
I am multifaceted and am able to integrate very well in the industry of Los Angeles. I can put on a mask and play the Hollywood game and have done it since I was seven years old. I have gone through a lot of personal shifts. My identity has been challenged, and I’ve been questioning my gender, sexuality, stereotypes associated with race as well as everything fore mentioned. My spirituality has been a driving force for my own healing and navigation through this very chaotically dense world.
I am an empath and never had the proper tools to utilize this characteristic as a gift until recently. A magnetic shift in 2016 opened me to my clairvoyance, clairaudience, and form deep relationships with the spirits all around us that have been passed down through my blood and through learning life’s lessons. It was through experiencing life with a new/ancient perspective that I became more one with myself. This opened me to a path of energetic healing. I was initiated and trained in the healing modalities of Sechim and Reiki.
Having mentors and guides through the land of my intuition allowed me to awaken my ability to channel information as well. This ability is expanded during oracle card readings and healings that I offer. The more that I witnessed and co-created with this magical new world the more I wondered where all of my worlds would meet. This really brought me to answer the question “What kind of art do I want to create?” The answer that kept coming up was healing.
For a while, I described myself as a healing artist. Creating environments that act as a safe portal to explore wounds, care for them, and remove any fear with empathy. This work does not happen in a void. It wasn’t until I began co-creating with a local black indigenous queer art collective called #SNATCHPOWER that I truly was able to practice my art in a ceremonial way. My art isn’t to just see what is fun, what is trendy, what is true to a brand. My art is transcendent, my art keeps me alive.
I married myself to the planet under the blood moon eclipse July 2018. No longer would I flirt with the possibility of leaving by my own choice. I surrendered to whatever this Jordan lifetime has in store for me and put my heels into the ground. The day after I channeled Medulla Oblongata in a ceremony with this beautiful collective for an event called Aint I a Womxn and was able to find a flow in my art aligned with my purpose on this planet that hadn’t been as clear until then.
That makes all of the art I create very… ME. The other blessed collective I was able to magnetize last year was working with Radimo LA: a gender-whatever queer owned platform for clothing and fashion. I model with them and have the jewelry I wrap featured on their site. Everything is merging. Between art commissions/collaborations, booking card readings and healings, and finding ways to monetize my creations abundantly I have a lot of diverse business opportunities coming my way.
My intention is to surrender and stay afloat in the waves that have been quite tumultuous locally, nationally, and globally. The Earth has been supportive thus far. Trust, faith, and patience are the biggest lessons I’ve been challenged to learn.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
This is a very challenging question. I was raised in this city. After graduation, I chose to move here despite New York being a more logical choice business wise. I chose Los Angeles for the sun and to be closer to family and for a long time found a lot of growth in abundance from the time I’ve spent here. As I expand into my truer self, I’ve found more conflict with this city. I’ve been in this industry for 20 years, The Los Angeles game is one that I know how to play but the more that I express myself in all of my queerness.
In all of my blackness, the more that I see how little representation there is for people like me. I want to ask YOU a question. How many billboards do you see with non-white people on them? How many black actors can you name? How many queer black actors can you name? How many queer black artists can you name? A gay person once told me, in response to my frustration of consuming art led by straight white male actors to play queer/trans ones ie. Call Me By Your Name, The Danish Girl, “queer actors can’t act.”
It is this ignorance and lack of representation in the art industry that makes me feel like I’m being pushed out of this city. It is unfortunate, but it is no surprise that most of the queer black artists I know are struggling financially, looking for jobs/housing, feel like their art does not have the same accessibility as someone who is straight, or white, or a man. All of which I am not. This erasure of identity is toxic for my own self-love, self-worth, and self-care.
Through my own free will and the strength of the tribe I am in, I have survived these unconscious, subconscious, and very conscious attacks on my existence. Mix that with the cost of living I have felt a lot of struggle in this city. Last year I made less than 10,000 dollars. I worked two jobs, 9 am-10 pm and had one day off to look for apartments and do laundry. The cheapest single apartment near where I worked would’ve cost me 1,300 monthly without a kitchen god forbid I wanted to live with my cat.
I have always felt an intense desire to be nomadic and travel with my art, and this reality has been pushing me more and more towards this goal. I am very much at a crossroad and trusting the subtle firm breezes that are aligned with my purpose and my mission on this planet. Again… Trust, Patience, and Faith. The biggest lessons life has been challenging me with. I think if you are starting out to do whatever in this city save up one year of whatever rent would be to live here for you.
This would be the most secure way to integrate here without stress your first months getting settled. School can be a great way to experience the city with the buffer of an institution especially if you are on scholarship. This city is rough. If I didn’t have family that lived here, I would not be surviving, and even now I am battling the fears of compromising my dreams, goals, and what I know I’m good at because of the challenge of making money.
I know I deserve both, to make money and do what I love, I just don’t know if they can exist at the same time in Los Angeles this moment. I am open to being pleasantly surprised. Improvements I would love to see: 1. Decrease in the cost of living. This is a conversation to be had amongst the “landlords” of this already stolen Tongva Land. Why is it that an apartments’ monthly rent in Inglewood can go from $1250 to 2,300 with only a 60-day notice?
More people need to practice truly being allies and talk to their rich friends that have no problem operating in this system that separates and values us by class. Sponsor a queer black person today! Ask me how! 2. I would love to see a shift in consumer culture. From a very young age, we are groomed to just take what is given to us. Through our education system feeding us one-sided historical narratives to our food system making certain foods more accessible than others due to lobbying, etc. We experience life by going with the flow of the patterns we exist in.
Art is no different, we watch what is on television. We go to the movies and participate in films that do not challenge our consciousness to expand outside of anything “normal” because normalcy is mythed as profitable. These myths have been debunked through films like Tangerine, Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, etc. Just on the simple fact of casting alone, the myth that Hollywood can’t create anything non-white centered because it will not be profitable for them is a lie.
The more we as consumers recognize our power and use our power to demand narratives that we don’t see to be created, the more that art will thrive and flourish. Ask yourself, do you really want to see non-white queer narratives explored in the land of multimedia or are you fine with the way it is? And if it is the latter, I ask you to take ownership of your complacency, and how complicit this way of thinking caters to the current global state of events being the way it is.
Racism, sexism, etc. are bred from years of people watching white dominated narratives that center men and no other artists. People are allowed to stay in their boxes and remain ignorant that this world contains people that think differently than they do, look different than they do, and have different perspectives on life outside of their limited worldview.
I am open to dialogue, so if anyone wants to invite me to expand on this on their platform I welcome this! I am moving through my fears. I do not know what my future in this city looks like. I have found deep loving connections and only hope to strengthen them as much as I can while I’m here.
Pricing:
- Readings $60 for 1 Hour
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.earthtojordi.com/
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthtojordi/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordimagic/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordiphi?lang=en
- Other: https://soundcloud.com/jordimagic/decolonzing-my-gender
Image Credit:
Jazzy Mercedes, Heidi Hartwig, Shamael Ali, Taryn Carter, Grayson McGuire, Agne Bak
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
