ABOUT

Artists raising money for the Black Trans Community. 

Art for Black Lives allows artists to donate fine art digital prints for sale, with all profits providing resource support to the Black Trans Community. R5 will benefit For the Gworls —  a Black, trans-led collective that helps Black transgender people pay for their rent, gender-affirming surgeries, smaller co-pays for medicines / doctor’s visits, and travel assistance.

This platform arose from conversations about the many ways in which current momentum in the anti-racist movement must become committed, ongoing engagement. The Black lives, queer and feminist movements have all failed to center Black Trans people historically, despite their bearing the brunt of anti-Black, anti-queer and anti-femme violence. This erasure is not just callous but self-defeating, as these movements cannot realize equitable and just treatment until they prioritize the most marginalized among them. This shift must take place at a personal and structural level. We believe that we have a responsibility to those who have been historically shut out of wealth accumulation, housing, and employment, particularly because our own liberation has benefitted from their vigorous fight and humanity. The art world, mired in questions of access, is a prime place to begin both the tactical work of resource redistribution and committed solidarity, as well as to engage critically with questions around who is silenced and who is heard. 

Acknowledgements

Art for Black Lives is organized by Robert Franklin and Camila McHugh. Thank you for inspiration and advice to Art for Philadelphia and much gratitude to Clementine Butler-Gallie, Charlie Jarvis, Noah Hornick, Max Kendrick, Andrew Lee, Dan Solbach and Will St. Amant.

R5’s participating artist list was curated in partnership with Contemporary Art Daily.

Fiscal sponsor: QUEER|ART, previously Pioneer Works (R3) and the Leslie Lohmann Museum of Art (R1 and R2)

Printing Partners: Round 5, like Round 3, is in partnership with Chroma Center, New York. Rounds 1, 2 and 4 generously sponsored by d’mage Fine Art Print Specialists, Berlin. 

Design: Hannah Lane, Hayley Smith and Maria Vargas Aguilar

All prints from Round 5 will be accompanied by a signed certificate of authenticity.  

For the HRC’s Dismantling the Culture of Violence Report, which analyzes how anti-transgender stigma and socioeconomic structures conspire to create a culture of violence, along with a list of the names and accounts of Trans people who were victim to deadly violence last year, see here.

Contemporary Art Daily Partnership

R5 is made possible in part by the generous collaboration of Contemporary Art Daily, a non-profit that has published documentation of new projects by artists and art spaces from around the world, every day since 2008. We appreciate their aid in curating this round’s artists, all of whom have current exhibitions in the fall 2021 calendar.

QUEER|ART Partnership

Art for Black Lives is pleased to partner with QUEER|ART, a New York based organization creating spaces, programs, and material support structures for LGBTQ+ artists. We admire and share QUEER|ART’s mission to amplify the “voice of a population that has been historically suppressed, disenfranchised, and often overlooked by traditional institutional and economic support systems.”  

Cost Breakdown

Rounds 1 and 2 of Art for Black Lives raised a total of $53,000 for The Okra Project. Rounds 3 and 4 raised $84,000 for The Frances Thompson Education Foundation. Our total project impact comes from sales revenue as well as direct donations on our behalf.

If you have any questions about how exactly money was spent or accounted for, or to donate on behalf of A4BL, please don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected].