New York-based Queer|Art, whose grantmaking programs are among the industry's most-watched, awarded its annual Prize for Recent Work to Anais Duplan. In honor of an outstanding work by a U.S. artist, it awards $10,000 in cash. An anthology of interviews, lyric essays, and ekphrastic poetry titled Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (2020) was the winner of the award. Deconstructing the relationship between artists and the shifting definition of "liberation," this book was written during Duplan's transition. In a statement, the judges said "that they all felt strongly about the quality and politics of Duplan's writing and the intention behind it; that his voice is one that is rising now, and his voice is one that we'll be listening to for a long time to come"
A. Duplan was a joint public programs fellow at both the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Studio Museum in Harlem (SMH) from 2017 to 2019. A year later, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, a residency program for African-American artists in Iowa City. "I've been talking with students a lot about this quote from Glissant, a fragment: 'consent to not be a single being,'" he said after receiving the award at the Whitney Museum in New York. I adore the idea that we can think of ourselves as more than just isolated individuals. Toss out the idea of an individual genius and focus more on the beauty we all share as a group.
The inaugural Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Award for Artists and Organizers will be presented to poet and artist Pamela Sneed in 2021 by Queer| Art to recognize Black artists and organizers who, according to a press release, "uplift critical histories of Black queer mentorship and exemplify a steadfast commitment to values shared by the QAM community." The Pamela Sneed Award for Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Artists & Organizers has since been renamed in honor of its first recipient.
Award-winning photographer Lola Flash was also recognized by the organization with its fifth annual Sustained Achievement Award for its work documenting members of the LGBTQ community.
Jean Dubreil