Happy midweek, everyone! Summer intern Tori here.
This month, Queer Art introduced the revolutionary “The Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists.” This $10K grant “sheds light on the under-recognized contributions of Black trans women visual artists and provides critical support to their continuing work.”
This grant is revolutionary not only because it recognizes and supports black trans women and black trans femme artists, but because of the changemakers behind it.
This grant was made possible by black trans activist, writer, and public speaker, Aaryn Lang, who shares in her interview for Jezebel the grant’s aim:
“It creates a pathway to success that doesn’t include having to be a muse for someone else. It’s about making the subject the artist—making the subject the creator. In the art world—everywhere, really—there’s this idea about who Black trans women are. The Illuminations Grant is actually opening the floor up to hear from Black trans women ourselves.”
Lang encourages those of us in the art world who are cisgender to see how our roles “could be more than just trying to humanize us [black trans women and black trans femmes] through photographs.” We could do more: “facilitate space for us to actually share our own humanity on our own terms.” (Jezebel)
For example, Lang cites the work of Tourmaline, a black trans woman filmmaker whose films include, “Happy Birthday, Marsha!” (2018) which, "imagines transgender rights activist and performer Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson in the hours before the 1969 Stonewall Riots” and stars black trans actress Mya Taylor as Marsha P. Johnson. In Lang’s interview, she puts Tourmaline’s work in conversation with white cisgender artist Andy Warhol’s portraits of Johnson to show us representation is more than who is seen, but who creates.
Among the judges for this grant are black trans woman artist Julianna Huxtable, who is “both maker and muse,” and multidisciplinary artist Kiyan Williams whose pronouns are they/them. Williams has given talks like the one at the Studio Museum about the “lives and creative practices of trans* and gender-nonconforming artists of African descent.” (Source)
Also this month, Baxter St at CCNY is running an exhibition called “Por Los Ojos De Mi Gente (Through the eyes of my tribe),”:
“a group exhibition that presents recent works by POC and Queer identifying lens-based artists [...] Reacting to inequity in contemporary visual representations of people of color within the LGBTQ spectrum, the participating artists in this exhibition draw from their respective personal experiences and histories to create a multi-narrative account of the complexities surrounding Queer identity in America.”
One featured artist is Golden, “a black gender-nonconforming trans-femme visual artist and poet.” Golden “deals with the intersections of blackness and gender within the construct of America.” (Source: Golden’s IG)
Another featured artist is Felicita “Felli” Maynard (they/them): “As a 1st generation Afrolatinx-American, their work uses photography to investigate and explore identity, gender, history and the black body. They challenge and re-write history by means of their work.” (Source: Artist Statement)
Lang’s Illuminations Grant and the Por Los Ojos De Mi Gente exhibition share a mission: they create spaces for black trans and nonbinary artists to represent themselves. As Lang tells us in her interview,
“It’s a common dynamic in the visual arts—the white cis artist capturing the Black transfeminine muse—and it’s one that Aaryn Lang says needs to change immediately. [...] We need the vision of Black trans people at the forefront to be unfiltered and ‘for us, by us.’ The Illuminations Grant is FUBU at its finest.”
