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

GOLDEN WINS FOURTH ANNUAL ILLUMINATIONS GRANT FOR BLACK TRANS WOMEN VISUAL ARTISTS

Queer|Art is pleased to announce the winner of the fourth annual Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists, Golden. The Brooklyn-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 their practice.

Golden’s art practice over the years has been centered around using photography, performance art, and poetry to document, question, and expand the archive of Black trans life in the United States. It is at the intersections of self documentation, family, queer imagination, and Black love where they believe their work is most boundless and referential. Born in the historically Black ecosystem of Hampton, VA, with roots in Pocomoke City, MD, Golden was raised by unrecognized field and factory workers, poets and photographers, local archivists and historians. This influence of the Black American South is felt most clearly in their work’s ability to speak from and towards collective freedom. They write, “the ethos of my art practice is to utilize living archives of self documented photographs of Black trans life within, outside, and surrounding the home, paired with the poetics of Black speech to build, document, and articulate the breath between Black trans living and survival in the United States.”

2023 Illuminations Grant Judge, Jonathan Lyndon Chase writes: “Golden’s visual photography evokes power, vulnerability, beauty, and glowing prowess. There are meditations on self reflection, communal embrace. The documentation on lived experiences in the Queer community and personal self expression are reminiscent of a home feeling.” Fellow Grant Judge, Lauren Haynes continues: “Golden’s photographs stood out among this year’s very strong group of visual artists. Each image left me wanting to see more and to engage more deeply with their practice—I am excited to see how Golden’s work continues to evolve.”

Golden (they/them) is a Black gender-nonconforming trans femme photographer, poet, educator, & community organizer raised in Hampton, VA (Kikotan land), currently residing in Brooklyn, NY (Lenapehoking land). They are the author of A Dead Name That Learned How to Live (2022), a Lambda Literary Award Finalist (2023), and the photographic series On Learning How to Live, an Arnold Newman Prize Finalist (2021). Golden is the recipient of an Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Luminaries Fellowship (2019), a Best of the Net Award (2020), a City of Boston Artist-in-Residence (2020-2021), a Mass Cultural Council Fellowship in Photography (2021), a Women Photograph Project Grant (2021), & a Tufts University Art Galleries Creative Futures Fund Grant (2022). They hold a BFA in Photography & Imaging from New York University.

On receiving the 2023 Illuminations Grant, Golden remarks: “This award will allow me to complete the installation for my debut solo exhibition, I’m Never Alone, and solidify a live/work space for me close to community in Boston, Massachusetts. At this moment of precipice, rigor, & transformation in my career, I’m glad to be able to center stability, more time for family, and reflection with these funds. Since the start of the pandemic, I feel like I've been running towards this break so I really want to honor what more internal time for experimentation & collaborative work can feed back into my self-portraiture practice.”

2023 ILLUMINATIONS GRANT FINALISTS

In addition to Golden, four other visual artists were acknowledged as finalists for this year—Fatima Jamal, Steven Anthony Johnson II, Catching On Thieves, and Jhona Xaviera.

2023 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 articulation - intertwined with domestic markers of a kitchen or a bedroom, they are then tethered 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 exclusion 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 Center, ICA Miami, High Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Bronx Museum, 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.

Lauren Haynes is Director of Curatorial Affairs and Programs at the Queens Museum. Previously she was the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Before her time at the Nasher, Haynes was Director of Artist Initiatives and Curator, Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas. Prior to Crystal Bridges, Haynes spent nearly a decade at the Studio Museum in Harlem. As a specialist in contemporary art by artists of African descent, Haynes curated dozens of exhibitions at the Studio Museum. Haynes’s recent curatorial projects include Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love (co-curator, 2023); Beyond the Surface: Mixed Media and Textile Works from the Collection (2022); Kenny Rivero: The Floor is Crooked (2021); Crystal Bridges at 10 (2021); Sarah Cain: In Nature (2021); State of the Art 2020 (co-curator, 2020); and The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art (co-curator, 2018). Haynes was a 2018 Center for Curatorial Leadership fellow and a recipient of a 2020 ArtTable New Leadership Award. Haynes is on the Board of Trustees for the AAMC & AAMC Foundation and serves as Vice President of Fundraising.

Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo) lives and works in New York. Until 2018, the conceptual works of Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki-Olivo) were created by an anonymous artist-subject. The name Puppies Puppies revealed neither gender or origin, nor whether a group or just a single individual was behind the pseudonym. Stepping away from this veiled identity became part of a series of works beginning in 2018 that were overlaid with the actual transitioning of the artist to Jade Kuriki Olivo. Her activist practice and commitment to the rights of BIPOC transgender, gender non conforming, two spirit + minorities has become steadily more important as she continues her transition as a multiracial woman of trans experience. She is the recent recipient of Toby’s Award, given every two years by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio. Recent exhibitions include Transcendence, Performance Space, New York (2022); TRANNY, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, Germany (2022); I’m Jade. I’m a trans woman trans womxn trans femme two spirit human being. Life feels long even though it hasn’t been all that long. A brain tumor surgically removed, getting divorced, losing my dad, brain tumor resurgence scare, starting hormone replacement therapy, experiencing sexual assault and rape multiple times and coming out as a woman. This exhibition is a roller coaster of the emotions feelings but also thoughts connections that happened over this span of time… only a little more than a decade. This exhibition covers the span of Puppies Puppies to Jade. It’s hard to get up each morning. My heart aches but I’m happy to be a woman. I’ll try my best to enjoy life even though society makes it difficult. From dust to dust I am but a speck on this planet and I wonder how to use this short life of mine. Trying not to let my trauma take over but still be kind to yourself Jade. This is the end of a decade • a new way of working coming soon. Sincerely, Jade Kuriki Olivo, Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland (2021); BODY FLUID: BLOOD, Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada (2019); PLAGUE, Halle für Kunst, Lüneberg, Germany (2019); Anxiety, Depression & Triggers, Balice Hertling, Paris, France (2019); Executive Order 9066 (Soul Consoling Tower), Queer Thoughts, New York (2019); Una Mujer Fantástica (A Fantastic Woman), Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, Germany (2018); Puppies Puppies, XYZ Collective, Tokyo (2016). Her work was featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 9th Berlin Biennale and X Nicaraguan Biennale.

“RECOGNIZE THE HUMANITY IN TRANS PEOPLE FROM TRANS CHILDREN TO TRANS ELDERS •I WAS BORN A WOMAN IN A SOCIETY THAT COERCED ME INTO REPRESSION UNTIL ADULTHOOD •KEEP UP • MY GENDER IS NOT DEFINED BY MY GENITALIA • MY GENDER IS NOT DEFINED BY CHROMOSOMES I AM A TRANS WOMAN DEMANDING ACCEPTANCE AND EQUITY NOT TOLERANCE AND EQUALITY

APPLY

*STAY TUNED IN 2024 TO APPLY FOR THE NEXT GRANT CYCLE!*

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)
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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 to right: Utē Petit, Marshland Restoration Program; Lee Laa Ray Guillory, Adella’s Reflection, (2020); Keijaun Thomas, I Looked Up at the Sky and I, Imagined All of the Stars Were My Sisters, photo by Charles Rice, (2020).