The Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists sheds light on the under-recognized contributions of Black trans women visual artists and provides critical support to their continuing work.

Queer|Art is pleased to introduce The Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists. Developed and named in partnership with Mariette Pathy Allen, Aaryn Lang, and Serena Jara, this new annual $10,000 grant, awarded to draw attention to an existing body of work, sheds light on the under-recognized contributions of Black trans women visual artists and provides critical support to their continuing work. Winning artists will receive additional professional development resources and further guidance to bolster their creative development in the field. 

The Illuminations Grant is made possible entirely through support provided by visual artist Mariette Pathy Allen, whose body of photographic work over the last forty years has been squarely focused on expanding cultural consciousness around gender and transformation. The development of this grant was stewarded by consultant and writer Aaryn Lang, working in collaboration with Mariette Pathy Allen, Serena Jara, and Queer|Art.

“The Illuminations Grant not only highlights the lacking representation of Black trans women in the visual arts,” says Lang, “but also seeks to confront the systemic barriers that deny them artistic opportunities and a sustainable craft. By supporting this grant, Mariette Pathy Allen challenges herself and the art industry to see Black trans women as more than mere subjects, while forging a new pathway for visual artists within this community to thrive.”

ABOUT

The Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists, a $10,000 grant, supports visual artists who are self-identified Black trans women and trans femmes. This new grant is made possible entirely through support provided by visual artist Mariette Pathy Allen with key consultancy by Aaryn Lang.

The Illuminations Grant is administered through Queer|Art with a rotating panel of judges, each of whom will conduct a studio visit with the winning artist as part of the award’s focus on supporting creative and professional development. Judges for the 2020 grant cycle include Thelma Golden, Juliana Huxtable, Texas Isaiah, and Kiyan Williams. Queer|Art staff will also provide the winning artist with consultations and further access to many of the tools they have developed in conjunction with the organization’s cornerstone creative and professional development program, Queer|Art|Mentorship. 

Qualified artists must be self-identified Black trans women and trans femmes working in visual art and based in the United States. Applications were open June 29, 2020-August 30, 2020.

For questions, email Illuminations Grant Manager ray ferreira at rferreira@queer-art.org.

KEIJAUN THOMAS WINS INAUGURAL ILLUMINATIONS GRANT FOR BLACK TRANS WOMEN VISUAL ARTISTS

Queer|Art is pleased to announce the inaugural winner of the Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists, Keijaun Thomas. The New York-based visual artist will receive a $10,000 cash grant and individual studio visits with members of the judges panel to support her practice.

Multidisciplinary artist Keijaun Thomas works across performance, multimedia installation, and poetry to reflect on collective ancestral memory, center Black healing, and disrupt monolithic representations of Blackness. Sometimes rendering painful histories of Black enslavement, Thomas implores us to consider notions of visibility as they pertain to representations of Black bodies and labor. Often recalling figures like the plantation worker, the house nanny, and the kitchen cook, and incorporating loaded signifiers of domesticity like a broom, a mop, or flour in her performance practice, Thomas demands judicious attention to the modes of viewership that have informed Blackness at large.

Thelma Golden, Illuminations Grant Judge and Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, remarks, “Keijaun Thomas's body of work situates her within a recent history of transformative artists employing performance to investigate and disassemble notions of Black identity. Through image-making, movement, writing, and multimedia installation, Keijaun reimagines and rebuilds collective history and memory, foregrounding Black humanity and creating space where culture and community can transcend the very frameworks her practice deconstructs.​​​​​​​” 

Keijaun Thomas is a New York based artist. Her work in performance, multimedia installation, and poetry explores the labor of black femmes in situations ranging from housework and hairdressing to athletic training and exotic dancing. Her performances combine rhapsodic layers of live and recorded voice, and her poems slip between various modes of address, exploring the pleasures and pressures of dependency, care, and support. Thomas underscores the endurance and intimacy care work demands of those expected to perform it—predominantly black women, black femmes, and people of color. She aims to build bridges of understanding, community and care through her pieces. Her work centers and focuses on self/communal care in real time and creating safer spaces for black and people of color. Thomas was a Franklin Furnace Fund Recipient for 2018.

On receiving the 2020 Illuminations Grant, Keijaun Thomas states:

“I am feeling an immense amount of gratitude for receiving the 2020 Illuminations Grant to continue making work, to continue to tell our stories as black trans people, to be able to uplift the dolls as we continue to build new futures for ourselves and our communities. I always say, ‘It is always for the girls, we are our sisters keepers’– this has been the foundation for my work, aiming to keep black trans women/femmes protected, to keep us afloat and living in our truth. This grant will allow me to focus my energy on making my new body of work: ‘Can You Do Me A Favor?’. I am so incredibly thankful and appreciative to be recognized as the inaugural grant winner. Thank you all very much. WE ARE HERE!”

Left: Screenshot of excerpt from My Last American Dollar, 2020 Queer|Art Annual Party, Zoom Performance, 2020; Right: GIF of excerpt from My Last American Dollar, special UK edition for PAUSE & AFFECT residency, 2019

2020 ILLUMINATIONS GRANT FINALISTS

2020 ILLUMINATIONS GRANT JUDGES

Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she began her career in 1987 before joining the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. After a decade at the Whitney, she returned to the Studio Museum in 2000 as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs, and was named Director and Chief Curator in 2005.

Juliana Huxtable is an artist, poet, performer and DJ born in Bryan-College Station, Texas. She attended Bard College. Recent shows and performances include epigenetic with Carolyn Lazard at Shoot the Lobster, New York, Transformer: A Rebirth of Wonder at 180 The Strand, London, Kiss My Genders at Hayward Gallery, London, Producing Futures – An Exhibition on Post-Cyber-Feminisms at Migros Museum, Zurich, and Penumbra with Hannah Black at Performance Space. She is represented by Project Native Informant, London, and Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York.

Texas Isaiah is a visual narrator based in Los Angeles, Oakland, and NYC. The intimate works he creates center the possibilities that can emerge by inviting individuals to participate in the photographic process. He is attempting to shift the power dynamics rooted in photography to display different ways of accessing support in one’s own body. Texas Isaiah’s work has been exhibited in numerous spaces such as UTA Artist Space (LA), Fotografiska (NYC), Aperture Foundation Gallery (NYC), Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), Hammer Museum (LA), Residency (LA), Charlie James Gallery (LA), and The Kitchen (NYC). Selected interviews, articles, and commissions include The New York Times, LA Times, Adweek, Artforum, Them, The FADER, VSCO, Vice, LALA Magazine, and Cultured Magazine. He is one of the 2018 grant recipients of Art Matters and the 2019 recipient of the Getty Images: Where We Stand Creative Bursary grant.

Kiyan Williams is a multidisciplinary artist from Newark, NJ who works fluidly across sculpture, performance, and video. Williams earned a BA with honors from Stanford University and an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. Their work has been exhibited at SculptureCenter, The Jewish Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and The Shed. They have given artist talks and lectures at The Guggenheim, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Princeton University, Stanford University, Portland State University, and Pratt Institute. Williams’ work is in private and public collections including The Hirshhorn Museum. Williams was previously an artist fellow at Leslie-Lohman Museum and is an alum of the EMERGENYC fellowship at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics at NYU. Williams is the recipient of the 2019/2020 Fountainhead Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University, where they are on faculty in the Sculpture and Extended Media Department.

APPLY

APPLICATIONS OPEN - March 1, 2021

APPLICATIONS CLOSE - June 30, 2021

What information does the application require?

• Contact info, narrative bio, and headshot

• One Sentence Synopsis of Artistic Practice

• Three Short Essay Questions on Artistic Practice, Professional Development, and Impact

• Work samples (1-12 Items, Details Below)

• 2 references that can speak to your practice

• CV 

Work Sample Specifications:

Choose from any of the following formats to upload work samples that best represent your practice. All work samples must be from work created within the last five years.

Images (Up to 12)

• File size: No larger than 10MB (each)

• File formats accepted: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .tif, .tiff, .bmp, .tga

Text (10 pg max)

• File format: PDF

• File size: No larger than 20MB (each)

• Note: Title page does not count towards 10 page maximum

Video (up to 10 minutes, not to exceed 2 excerpts)

• File size: No larger than 500MB

• File formats accepted: .m4v, .mov, .mp4, .wmv, .flv, .asf, .mpeg, .mpg, .mkv

• Youtube and Vimeo links accepted if publicly viewable only (no password)

Please include title, medium, year, and brief description of each work sample.

Note: Application fees for all applicants have been waived.

MEET THE TEAM

Mariette Pathy Allen is a photographer of transgender, genderfluid, and intersex communities. Moving from painting, a solitary activity, to photography, Allen has been documenting the transgender community for over four decades. In 1978, on the last day of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Allen met Vicky West, a trans woman she befriended and through whom she was first invited to Fantasia Fair, a transgender conference where she would serve as official photographer. She went on to author several books that have brought visibility to transgender communities across the world including Transformations: Cross-dressers and Those Who Love Them (1989), Masked Culture: The Greenwich Village Halloween Parade (1994), The Gender Frontier (2004), TransCuba (2014), and Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Burma and Thailand (2017).  “Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, most of the people I came to know had never met anyone like themselves. The feelings of fear and guilt that they experienced most of their lives were significantly reduced through the relief and joy of finding community. Over time, I developed relationships with the great range of gender nonconformists, and my photography, writing, and speaking skills allowed me to become an activist for transgender rights. With that activism came a deeper understanding of the dangers and public misunderstanding of gender variant people. The attitudes of medical and legal establishments, the callous media presentations, and the violence ordinary people felt justified in expressing, alarmed me. The people who were hurt the most by attackers were, and continue to be, black transfeminine sex workers. At the same time, more and more black trans women have become successful as performers, dancers, singers, actresses, and larger than life personalities. I missed seeing black trans women who are visual artists.

Although I was already aware of the violence that trans women face on a daily basis, it was only when Serena introduced me to Aaryn that I realized I could do something about the limited options for visual artists whose talents may never have been nurtured or valued. This grant is the first to be offered specifically for Black transgender women and femmes in support of their path within visual arts. Although focused very precisely, I believe that it will have an important impact on the artists themselves, and their influence on the art world.”

ray ferreira (Illuminations Grant Manager) is an artist and educator based on the Lenape lands, today called New York. She has taught at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem and currently the Brooklyn Museum -as the Guided Gallery Visit Coordinator- where she oversees educator-led experiences for K-12 students, their teachers, and their chaperones. She is also a Curriculum Consultant for the Octavia Project, an interdisciplinary program that uses speculative fiction as a lens through which to envision new futures and greater possibilities for our world.

ferreira has exhibited and performed in various spaces including the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, el Centro León, Poets House, and Performance Space New York. In addition to individual projects, she has been increasingly collaborating with other artists including the collective Vers. She holds a BA in Studio Art from SUNY Geneseo and an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College.

GALLERY