Constance Collier-Mercado razes walls between literary and artistic genres

“Once I’ve got some words on paper, it’ll start to buzz things for me. I’m like, oh, this could be a visual art thing, this could be a performance piece, this could be a short film — but usually I need the concreteness of the words first, and that’ll expand lots of different directions from there.” Though a sense of ease surrounds her when she explains her process, it hasn’t always been easy working outside of category. Early on, Collier-Mercado was overlooked when pursuing opportunities that resisted the idea of...