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 2022 grant cycle include Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Kimberly Drew, and Connie (Girl) Fleming. 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 March 31, 2022—July 15, 2022.

For questions, email Queer|Art Awards Manager Dani Brito at dbrito@queer-art.org.

UTĒ PETIT WINS THIRD ANNUAL ILLUMINATIONS GRANT FOR BLACK TRANS WOMEN VISUAL ARTISTS

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

Interdisciplinary artist and farmer, Utē Petit narrates Black-Indigenous land traditions across visual and embodied mediums. Petit’s visual language convenes figurative drawing, woven and quilted textile practices, and installation to render Afro-Indigenous sovereignty across the Americas. Across her layered work, Petit pulls from inherited familial textile traditions to chronicle legacies of interdependence and sovereignty among Black-Indigenous peoples: the artist learned quilting from her maternal grandmothers who were quilters in Misi-Ziibi. For Petit, cooking and gardening are somatic vehicles for historicizing and imagining speculative futures. Her current body of work builds off these familial legacies, worldbuilding practices, and aesthetic traditions to imagine a new nation called Ailanthaland—“nation of heavenly beings.” Petit’s Ailanthaland strives “to be an ecological paradise tenable to all beings, following the stewardship of Afro-Indigenous peoples of the Americas.”

2022 Illuminations Grant Judge and visual artist, Jonathan Lyndon Chase writes: “Utē’s work is multi-layered, sensory touching on physical and metaphysical energies. Hungry and visually generous in the different modes of expression that are generously inviting the viewer to enter an ever growing world. The attention to poetic detail in the drawings are filled with vigor and show subjects I can relate to. Honest and Raw unapologetic gestures.”

Utē Petit works as a visual artist, and farmer. Her current work aspires toward a new nation called Ailanthaland: nation of heavenly beings. Ailantha aspires to be an ecological paradise tenable to all beings, following the stewardship of Afro-Indigenous peoples of the Americas. She also loves to cook, and is a big transit nerd. She is often found daydreaming about persimmons, airplanes, and hugging cypress trees.

On receiving the 2022 Illuminations Grant, Utē Petit remarks: "This award has brought the possibility of having a professional studio into reality for me. I plan to find a new space to create larger work, while also making time to further devote to my practice. This is a blessing that will allow me to consider personal and career moves that were previously beyond my means."

2022 ILLUMINATIONS GRANT FINALISTS

In addition to Utē Petit, four other visual artists were acknowledged as finalists for this year—Courtney Washington, Tia Jackson, Ava Tuitt, and z tye.

2022 ILLUMINATIONS GRANT JUDGES

Jonathan Lyndon Chase is an interdisciplinary artist who works in painting,  video, sound and sculpture to depict queer black love and community amidst the back drop of urban and domestic spaces. Chase’s figures hang in various forms of articula tion - intertwined with domestic markers of a kitchen or a bedroom, they are then teth ered by pop and street signage to blend emotional and physical, internal and external  states of being. Rendered through layers of bright, visceral paint, make- up, foam and  glitter these compositions challenge and subvert canonical misrepresentation and exclu sion of the black body. Recent exhibitions include WHAT DO YOU SEE, YOU PEOPLE, GAZING AT ME at  Sadie Coles HQ, London. Chase’s work has been previously featured in Art Basel,  Switzerland; Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Philadelphia Museum of  Art, Pond Society (solo), Shanghai; Company Gallery, New York; LSU Museum of Art  (solo), Baton Rouge; the Rubell Foundation, Miami; Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke;  California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia; The Bunker, Collection of Beth Rudin De-Woody, Palm Beach and Pennsylva nia Academy of the Fine Art, Philadelphia. Their work is included in numerous private  and public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Cen ter, ICA Miami, High Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Bronx Muse um, Rubell Family Collection, Buxton Contemporary Art Museum, The Wedge Collec tion, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and Woodmere Museum of Art. Chase was  born in 1989 in Philadelphia, PA where they currently live and work.

Kimberly Drew is a writer, curator, and activist. Drew received her B.A. from Smith College in Art History and African-American Studies. She first experienced the art world as an intern in the Director’s Office of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her time at the Studio Museum inspired her to start the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, sparking her interest in social media. Drew's writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Vogue, Glamour, Playboy, and Teen Vogue and she has executed Instagram takeovers for Prada, The White House, and Instagram. Drew served as the Social Media Manager at The Met. She is the co-editor of Black Futures which she published in 2020 with Jenna Wortham. Drew recently joined Pace Gallery as Associate Director. You can follow her at @museummammy on Instagram and Twitter.

Connie (Girl) Fleming is a performer, model, stylist, fashion illustrator, and undeniable New York City legend. As a renowned stage performer, she has graced iconic nightlife venues like the Palladium, the Tunnel, and the Pyramid; performed in various videos for George Michael, Chic, and Jody Watley; and appeared in the opening montages for Saturday Night Live and MTV News. Connie’s status as a fashion icon and cultural muse has led her to model for Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, and Andre Walker across New York and Paris. A charter member of the House of Field and a Mistress of Ceremonies at Jackie 60, Connie began her reign as one of New York’s most sought-after gate-keepers when she worked the door at Eric Conrad’s Poop at the Supper Club. Her inimitable fashion drawings have been used to illustrate costumes for Beyoncé, Anastasia, Swarovski, and “The Devil Wears Prada,” among others. Today, Connie splits her time between various artistic endeavors, and works as a runway coach, producer, and casting director for several fashion brands in New York and abroad.

APPLY

APPLICATIONS OPEN - MARCH 31, 2022
COMPLETE APPLICATION - JULY 15, 2022

What information does the application require?

• Contact info, narrative bio, and headshot

• One sentence description of your artistic practice

• One short essay question on Artistic Practice

• 2 references that can speak to your practice

• CV

• Work samples (12 samples maximum, details below)

Work Sample Specifications:

Choose from any of the following formats to upload work samples that best represent your practice.

Allowed Media Types:

- Images (up to 10MB each)
- Video (up to 500MB each)
- PDFs (up to 20MB each)
- External media from YouTube, Vimeo and SoundCloud

Images do not have to be a particular size, as SlideRoom's servers will process them to fit their system. Their processors will resize anything larger than 1280 x 1280 x 72 ppi to fit within those limitations.

Image file formats accepted: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .tif, .tiff, .bmp, .tga
Video file formats accepted: .m4v, .mov, .mp4, .wmv, .flv, .asf, .mpeg, .mpg, .mkv

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

Note: Application fees for all applicants have been waived.

Questions? Please carefully review our Frequently Asked Questions before contacting us with questions about the grant or application process. Thank you!

MEET THE TEAM

Mariette Pathy Allen is a photographer of transgender, genderfluid, and intersex communities, as well as other continuous series such as Birth and Families, Flowers and Fantasy, and Scapes. Allen’s earliest portfolios contain images taken in New Jersey and Philadelphia, People with art, and dance. 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 continues to pursue the work of photographing, interviewing, and advocating on behalf of gender nonconforming people.

Allen is the author of four books that have brought visibility to transgender communities across the world including Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them (1989), The Gender Frontier (2004), TransCuba (2014), and Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Burma and Thailand (2017). Allen’s work is included in numerous collections, both public and private, and has been exhibited internationally. Her work is being archived by Duke University's Rare Book and Manuscripts Library and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's Studies. Allen is based in New York City and is represented by ClampArt. You can find her online at www.mariettepathyallen.com.

GALLERY

ARCHIVE

Left: Lee Laa Ray Guillory, Adella’s Reflection, 2020. Right: Keijaun Thomas, I Looked Up at the Sky and I, Imagined All of the Stars Were My Sisters, photo by Charles Rice, 2020.