Queer|Art Introduces Inaugural Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Award and Announces 2021 Queer|Art|Prize Winners and Finalists

Queer|Art, New York City's home for the creative and professional development of LGBTQ+ artists, has announced the winners of two of its biggest annual awards: poet, performer, and visual artist Pamela Sneed is the inaugural winner for the Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Award for Artists and Organizers and photographer Lola Flash is the winner of the 2021 QueerArt|Prize for Sustained Achievement. Four additional artists-Anaïs Duplan, Heesoo Kwon, Le'Andra LeSeur, and Moises Salazar-have also been named as the finalists of the 2021 Queer|Art|Prize for Recent Work. Each winner will receive a $10,000 cash prize. All three awards are made possible with support from HBO.

Sneed, Flash, and the four Recent Work Prize finalists will be honored in a public ceremony-The 2021 Queer|Art Annual Party, Queer|Art's biggest event of the year-on December 14th, 7pm streaming Live from The Whitney Museum of American Art. Hosted this year by poet/performer Candystore and activist/drag artist Junior Mintt, The Annual Party will also occasion the reveal of the winner for the 2021 Queer|Art|Prize in the category of Recent Work, as well as the graduation of the 2020-2021 Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellows. The celebratory program will conclude with a raucous post-ceremony cabaret organized by the hosts with special guest performers (to be announced soon).

The Black QAM Award and the Prize both honor Queer|Art's mission to support LGBTQ+ artists across generations and creative disciplines. Says Queer|Art Executive Director, Travis Chamberlain:

"This year we are proud to introduce the Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Award for Artists and Organizers alongside the Queer|Art|Prize, now in its fifth year. Together, these awards represent a natural outgrowth of Queer|Art's work and values by honoring LGBTQ+ artists both within our immediate community and within the wider community of queer artists that exists throughout the U.S. I am particularly moved that this year's winners for both awards are individuals who also happen to be beloved mentors here at Queer|Art, both of whom-Pamela Sneed and Lola Flash-have made a significant impact on our community, helping to shape the values that hold us together and that continue to guide us forward. The tremendous scope of their contributions to queer culture, queer wellbeing, and uplifting Black queer community and excellence cannot be overstated and resounds ever-more loudly with each passing year. These awards, and the ceremony that accompanies them, confirm the incredible trailblazing impact of their lives and work on a national level, and we are honored to be able to recognize them both and celebrate their continuing achievements at this year's Annual Party."

The Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Award for Artists and Organizers is a new annual award that acknowledges Black Mentors and Fellows from the Queer|Art|Mentorship (QAM) community who uplift critical histories of Black queer mentorship and exemplify steadfast commitment to values shared by the QAM community. Developed by Queer|Art's Black LGBTQ+ Artists Group (BlaQ), the award highlights artists who uphold guiding principles and practices like intergenerational exchange, collective care, creative resilience, preservation of Black queer legacies, and an engagement with grassroots organizing within their creative practice and beyond. This year, judges included celebrated writers, artists, and performers, Maria Bauman, Felicita (Felli) Maynard, and Saeed Jones. The award is accompanied by a $10,000 cash prize, and the winner will be honored during the Queer|Art Annual Party, in conjunction with the Queer|Art Prize ceremony.

For the inaugural Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Award for Artists and Organizers, artist and multi-year Queer|Art Mentor Pamela Sneed is recognized "not only for her brilliance and accomplishments in the field of literary arts but also for her longstanding commitment to nurturing younger Black queer voices," states Bauman, Maynard, and Jones:

"As a jury and as members of a richly Black artistic community, we have been and continue to be deeply moved by Pamela Sneed's gift for moving all of us forward. In recognition of the fact that mentorship itself is as beautiful, gorgeous, and vital as any other artistic discipline, we are pleased to award Sneed the inaugural Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Award as a recognition of not only her brilliance and accomplishments in the field of literary arts but also for her longstanding commitment to nurturing younger Black queer voices, both through Queer|Art|Mentorship and outside of QAM."

In the area of Sustained Achievement, the 2021 Queer|Art|Prize has been awarded to Lola Flash. The 2021 Sustained Achievement panel of judges-Jonathan González, Ryan Inouye, and Nancy Rodrigo-remarked on Flash's lifelong commitment to activism centered on elevating marginalized voices: "Lola Flash's energy, their tenacity, and can-do attitude, is what the 2021 Queer|Art|Prize represents."

"We need to elevate Lola Flash right now, this year. A lot of nominees in ACT-UP are part of our history, but so much of that history and narrative is dominated still by wealthy white gay men. Lola Flash changes that dialogue. With their portraits of the queer community and of people of color, Flash's photography is a legacy to our history, this time rewritten and inclusive." shares Nancy Rodrigo.

Jonathan González states that "Lola Flash's sustained creative and mentorship contributions animate, for me, how Queer People of Color are always on the move; building collective geographies of care that persist on lower frequencies; always building kinships that slip through the rigidity of queer archives and the dominant gaze; spatializing support intergenerationally and across landscapes; keeping queer memories expansive, alive, and felt."

Ryan Inouye expressed that "this sustained achievement award honors Lola Flash as a giant of history. As we think through how we want to be with each other both inside and outside of institutions, the artist's multi-faceted practice consistently centers the exuberant life and community that precedes a politics of resistance, just as their work charges us to protect what we have and question how to build in the future."

Finalists for the Recent Work award, which honors specific projects completed between Pride 2020 and Pride 2021, include artists working in a number of different mediums. The Finalists for Recent Work are:

Anaïs Duplan for Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (2020), a series of lyric essays, interviews with contemporary artists and writers of color, and ekphrastic poetry. Duplan deconstructs how creative people frame their relationships to the word, "liberation." With a focus on creatives who use digital media and language-as-technology-luminaries like Actress, Juliana Huxtable, Lawrence Andrews, Tony Cokes, Sondra Perry, and Nathaniel Mackey-Duplan offers three lenses for thinking about liberation: the personal, the social, and the existential. Arguing that true freedom is impossible without considering all three, the book culminates with a personal essay meditating on the author's own journey of gender transition while writing the book.

Heesoo Kwon for Leymusoom Universe (2021), a digital archive and a feminist utopia, reincarnating her female ancestors' lives and Leymusoom communal spaces without constraints of time and space. Leymusoom, an autobiographical feminist religion initiated by Kwon in 2017, is an ever-evolving exploration of her family histories and feminist liberation through 3D animated videos and interactive games of real and imagined worlds, populated by avatars of her female ancestors, living in 3D environments from actual locations or spaces from her life and family history. The digitized places where Kwon and and her family's memories are embedded become portals for hyperspace travel, inviting the users to explore memories and her envisioned utopian world.

Le'Andra LeSeur for Le'Andra LeSeur: In Reverence (2021), an exhibition of video, installation, photography, and performance celebrating blackness, contemplating the experience of invisibility, and seeking to dismantle stereotypes surrounding Black female identity, among other subject matters. LeSeur offers, "My work is about honoring - honoring ancestors, honoring lives I've never met, honoring family, and most importantly honoring myself through this process - and recently I've been focused on how the presence and absence of language aids us in this honoring." These artworks engage the senses as well as the intellect and operate on intensely personal levels and simultaneously raise macro-social questions.

And Moises Salazar for Puto El Último (2021), an exhibition title translating to "Last one there is a fag." The exhibition shares a series of works composed of glitter on board, faux fur, and yarn with images that are pleasing to the eye and proudly defiant. Whether posing provocatively, or sporting a cowboy hat, there is a tenderness that envelopes each figure. The viewer craves to touch and stroke the soft surfaces, creating a metaphor for wanting to comfort the artist and somehow lessen the trauma and sadness. During this time of cultural reconciliation, the exhibition serves as a beacon of hope for everyone struggling to find their place proudly in this world.

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