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.
Monique in her Room, Queens NY, image by Mariette Pathy Allen
The Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists is an annual $10,000 grant awarded to provide critical support to Black trans women whose work has often been under-recognized in the visual art field. In order to further recognize finalists for their artistic achievements, Queer|Art is pleased to announce that the grant will also provide a $1,250 award to four distinguished finalists. Winning artists and finalists will receive additional professional development resources and further guidance to bolster their creative development in the field.
Now in its 7th year, the Illuminations Grant was developed and named in partnership with Mariette Pathy Allen, Aaryn Lang, and Serena Jara. The 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 llluminations 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 2026 grant cycle will be announced soon.
Qualified artists must be self-identified Black trans women and trans femmes working in visual art and based in the United States. The application deadline is July 2nd, 2026. The application portal can be accessed here.
“The Illuminations Grant not only highlights the lacking representation of Black trans women in the visual arts, 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.” —Aaryn Lang
APPLY
APPLICATIONS OPEN - MARCH 31st, 2026
COMPLETE APPLICATION - JULY 2nd, 2026
What information does the application require?
Contact info, narrative bio, and headshot
Demographic information
One sentence description of your artistic practice
Two short essay questions on your 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 5MB each)
Video (up to 250MB each)
PDFs (up to 10MB each)
Audio (up to 30MB each)
3D Models
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 GRANT TEAM
Mariette Pathy Allen, image courtesy of the artist
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.”
Mariette Pathy Allen is represented by ClampArt in New York City which recently hosted "Transformations," a solo exhibition of her early transgender work, from February 25th to April 10th, 2021.
Aaryn Lang is a Black, Ohio-born consultant, writer, public speaker, and creative visionary, dedicated to advancing the social, economic, and political well-being of the transgender community, with a specific focus on Black transgender women. Through her involvement in the Trans Women of Color Collective of Ohio, Aaryn played a pivotal role in the Black Lives Matter movement and network. She connected the struggle for Black trans rights to the resurgence of the Black civil rights movement following the murder of Mike Brown. Aaryn organized the first National Day of Action for Black Trans Women in history and introduced a new framework for Black and LGBTQ movement spaces to support and uplift Black trans resistance. Her insights and expertise led to her becoming a founding board member of The Marsha P. Johnson Institute. A sought-after speaker, Aaryn has engaged audiences at The White House, Vice, The Claremont Colleges, Columbia University, OSU, NYU, and more. She has contributed writings to The Root, them., Cosmopolitan, and has been featured in HuffPost, Mic, Allure, and many other publications. Aaryn has co-written and starred in multiple media projects, such as Barnard College’s "Don’t Be a Bystander," Patrisse Cullors’s "Malcolm Revisited," and notably hosted the Emmy-Nominated PBS Digital series "First Person."
Miss Lang continues to advance her work creatively and philanthropically. In collaboration with Digital Media Management and Anne Hathaway, Aaryn conceptualized, developed, and hosted the digital series "Miss Lang Presents," a week-long content event exploring topics around Black Trans liberation, arts activism, family, and education amid a global pandemic and political uprisings, which garnered over 4.5 million video views on Instagram. She is also the creator of the first artistic grant solely for Black transgender women, The Illuminations Grant, hosted by Queerart NYC and in partnership with Mariette Pathy Allen and Serena Jara. Aaryn serves on the advisory board for The Black Trans Fund, a fund explicitly supporting Black trans joy and liberation across the United States. Aaryn optimizes her experience as an organizer and her skills as a creative to develop content that interrogates the current conditions and challenges her viewers to see popular topics and current events through a different lens.
Serena Jara is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, video, drawing, and sound. In her photos, she reflects on visibility as a tool used to both empower and manipulate trans people, creating staged portraits to complicate tropes of assimilationist representation. Referencing cinematic imagery and celluloid glamour, she explores the limits of a visual culture dominated by cisgender interpretations of trans experiences. Her work has been featured in institutions such as MOMA PS1, Fundación del Centro Cultural del México Contemporáneo, Dixon Place Theatre, and Cuchifritos Gallery, as well as online publications such as DIS, V Magazine, Refinery 29, and Mic.
For the past two and half years, Jara has been working with Mariette Pathy Allen, archiving and developing new pathways for access to her work, advising closely on the management of her legacy, and supporting the development of the Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists.
ARCHIVE
2020
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2024
2025
Top row, left to right: Keijaun Thomas, I Looked Up at the Sky and I, Imagined All of the Stars Were My Sisters, photo by Charles Rice, 2020; Lee Laa Ray Guillory, Adella’s Reflection, 2020; Utē Petit, Marshland Restoration Program.
Bottom row, left to right: Golden, I'm a buzz light years away from language & a land name; still from Dilating for Maximum Results (2023) by Nyala Moon; still from Love Is A Letting Go (2024) by Fatima Jamal.