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Art & Mind 2023: I Know Who I am! Journeys of Women of Color & Femme-Expressing Creatives

Our second show, "I Know Who I Am!" occurred October 5th 2023. This event, inspired by co-founder Claire Jones' 2022 journey through diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and near paralysis, was our first event where we gained grants and sponsorships. Five artists - Haisi Hu, Kai Thaís, Tennesha Skyerrs, The Lady Ms Vagina Jenkins and SabiLewSounds (Sabina Lewis) from the U.S and Canada premiered in a 27 minute documentary, with a goal of highlighting women of color & femme-expressing creatives of color who've found solace & healing through art. In addition, with the help of our first Art Direction Team, we created a documentary about Claire's cancer journey titled, "A 50% Chance of Paralysis: Get Ahead of Life Before Life Gets Ahead of You!"

Art & Mind 2023 Poster by Amaranthia Sepia

The poster is a digitally drawn sunflower field. These sunflowers are a mustard yellow with orange highlights. The centers of the sunflowers are brown and black. The sunflowers fade into the background, leading to green and grey mountains with an abstract curly pattern at their bases. The mountains are rounded at the top, and fade into a whitish green. The sky is blue with white paint splotches and swirls as clouds.Three mustard yellow circles are lined up in the middle of the poster.

A 50% Chance of Paralysis Poster

Freedom Festival Semi Finalist. SISTA CREATIVES RISING PRESENTS Art & Mind An “I Know Who I Am” Virtual Fundraiser & Film Event Documentary About Cancer A 50% CHANCE OF PARALYSIS: Get Ahead of Life Before Life Gets Ahead of You! Art by Amaranthia Sepia Additional coloring by Linlin Yu. A nude voluptuous brown woman holding a red cane with a white handle in front of her, stands at the edge of a clear pond shaped like Earth.

Art & Mind 2023 Poster by Amaranthia Sepia

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A Screenshot of our Givebutter Page, showing that we raised $1453

"Walking Through Cancer Together," artwork by Amaranthia Sepia, showing Amaranthia & Claire reminisc

A digital cartoon drawing of Claire & Amaranthia sits on top of a digital collage of a digitally drawn sunflower field. Photos of Claire’s cancer journey, from photos of her spinal scar to pictures of her first steps after surgery and photos of Amaranthia and Claire celebrating Sista Creatives Rising’s Art & Mind event. Hand drawn text bubbles that are white with red handwriting explain the imagery. The two cartoon drawings are drawn with white and black outlines, making them look like a cut-out

Photo of Amaranthia & Claire thanking those who supported the fundraiser

Amaranthia, a 23 year old Black woman, and her 60-year old Mom, Claire Jones, are shown sitting on their back porch steps with trees and a bright blue sky behind them. They are looking up at the sky. Amaranthia, to the right, is wearing a punk style leather jacket, black and white striped leggings with sunflower prints, and a black and white jagged striped crop top. Claire is wearing a vibrant red, green and yellow large thin scarf and dress with white pants and a denim jacket.

A Screenshot of our Givebutter Page, showing that we raised $1453

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Event Impact

The Art & Mind 2023 event was an 11-month endeavor. Our Givebutter.com page went public in late August 2023 to allow people to receive tickets and to begin fundraising for our Sistas Uprising Fund, where we develop microgrants for marginalized women & femme-expressing creatives. In 2023, we were sponsored by Brain Arts Org and Dancing Queerly Boston. The Mass Cultural Council and The Puffin Foundation provided additional funding.

Our Sistas Uprising Fund goal was $1000 to develop five $200 microgrants. Through Givebutter.com, we reached $1453, allowing us to release seven grants in early Spring 2024. We had 91 supporters on our GiveButter page and 45+ attendees with high audience participation.

Artist Documentary

In our film with the same name as the event,

our five chosen artists from our June 2023 open call shared narrative videos compiled into a 27-minute documentary. Each artist filmed disability-accessible videos about their experience with various social issues and how art is a healing tool for them.

Initiative Statement

Intergenerational dysfunctions linked to race, sexuality, and gender can subconsciously impact the lives of women of color and femme-expressing folks of color, complicating our relationship with ourselves. The basis of several of these issues can be linked back to the chaos and destruction caused by colonialism. Confronting these issues through creative and artistic endeavors can catalyze us to embrace ourselves as whole, healthy beings.

These stories show how art can be used to empower yourself and for emotional & spiritual healing. We hope our efforts to bring folks together to tell these triumphant, empowering stories will spark healing discussions across cultures and communities, resulting in solidarity.

The Five Art & Mind Documentary Artists

Painter - The Lady Miss Vagina Jenkins -She/They/We (Oakland, CA)

We are The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins (we/they/she), a multidisciplinary creative based in Oakland, CA, US.
“We” reminds us of the Ancestors; The People who survived so that we could thrive. "We/Us/Ours" also
reminds Us that despite the isolation of living as a Disabled/Neurodivergent and Aging Black person we
Are Never Alone.
Just like our Ancestors, we are always looking for ways to Make Do and Get Free. In our performance,
costuming and millinery works, we upcycle found materials and historic dance/movement into luxe,
glamour. In Our Taxidermy work, we transmute the tragedy of death into beautiful flora and fauna
sculpture. In our film and experimental works we create worlds that allow us to Do/Be more. In our
painting we seek to capture the freedom of being Connected to Something Greater Than Ourselves.

Multi-Media Artist - Kaiana Hernandez -(She/Her), Puerto Rico

Kai Thaís is a 20 year-old multidisciplinary visual artist based in Mayagüez,
Puerto Rico, where she currently studies visual arts at the University of
Puerto Rico. A nomad of the arts, she intends to explore every medium that
appears before her to make sense of that which surrounds her. Starting with
her creative root of drawing and painting; she’s gone to play with writing,
tattooing, digital media, photography, and so on. While collaborating with
art collectives and partaking in creative residencies.
With a kin to the unsettling, she explores the relationship with the self, her
body, voice, and space; and how her colonial sociocultural context is
expressed through her work is the endless search, although she has no
intention of finding “it”. She has participated in artistic residencies and
group exhibitions, as well as an individual exhibition; En el tendedero,
shown in Mayagüez in late 2022.

Musician & Artist - SabiLewSounds - (She/Her), Tampa, Florida

I create art, music, write and try to love others because I know I am dearly and endlessly loved and many
of us are hurt and trampled and end up hurting others because no one chose to love us. I believe we are all
here to teach each other about the goodness that exists in this world and to evolve as a race to greater
acts of love, compassion, and sacrifice... including and not limited to loving the earth and animals that are
all around us that we have forgotten to watch after. I have been singing since I can remember and I really
want to encourage others who suffer that they are not alone in their suffering, there is someone who
understands and can help you get past the suffering and not just survive but to live and thrive and bring joy
and healing to others as well.

Painter Tennesha Skyers - (She/Her), Canada

Tennesha Skyers is a Canadian artist based in Toronto, Canada. Born in 1994, she is known for her large
colorful and fluorescent self-portraits. She depicts old family photos, her personal experiences growing up
as a black woman, her imagination, and her travels. Her work usually addresses issues black individuals
have faced since the abolishment of slavery, environmental issues, and resolutions. She is a self-taught
artist retaining her raw and bubbly energy in her portraits. In each painting, she explores colors, space, and
how they make her feel. Her work pulls inspiration from black and African artists to change the identity
and stereotype of references needing to come from Western and Eurocentric art history. She is drawn to
representing self-portraits, an interest that stemmed from her introversion, and not seeing any black
female self-portraits, giving black artists visibility. She works in numerous mediums including painting,
mixed media, sculpture, and digital drawing.

Animator Haisi Hu - (She/Her), Brooklyn, NY

For over twenty years Haisi Hu has been making and expanding traditional
animations such as Claymation and hand-drawn animation. Hu was born in
China and immigrated to the US when she was a teenager. She has been
living in Brooklyn since 1990. Her claymation films are shown worldwide
and locally, including Animation Nights New York and Brooklyn Film
Festival. She is the recipient of the NYFA Fellowship, Jerome Foundation
Film Production Grant, NYSCA Film/Media grants. She teaches animation
to high-school students and works at Cooper Union School of Art as a film
technician, and from the same school, she also obtained her BFA degree.

blue watercolor background that begins with a dark blue and fades into a lighter blue.

Selected Semi-Finalist at Freedom Festival International 2024!

Documentary: "A 50% Chance of Paralysis: Get Ahead of Life Before Life Get's Ahead of You"

A 50 Percent Chance of Paralysis_Get Ahead of Life Before Life Gets Ahead of You_SistaCrea

SISTA CREATIVES RISING PRESENTS Art & Mind An “I Know Who I Am” Virtual Fundraiser & Film Event Documentary About Cancer A 50% CHANCE OF PARALYSIS: Get Ahead of Life Before Life Gets Ahead of You! Winner of the Freedom Festival International Best DisABILITY Film Award. Art by Amaranthia Sepia Additional coloring by Linlin Yu. A nude voluptuous brown woman holding a red cane with a white handle in front of her, stands at the edge of a clear pond shaped like Earth.

Claire after emergency high-risk spinal surgery. March 2022

Claire, an older Black woman with a shaved head, receiving assistance from two physical therapists, their heads censored with sunflowers drawn by Amaranthia. One is on her left and one is on her right helping her walk the first time after spinal surgery. Claire is using a walker, and is wearing a large brace that covers her neck and torso. Claire is also wearing a hospital gown. Everyone is wearing a mask.

Claire, 11 months after remission, celebrating the sun with her cane

Claire is wearing a white kimono style cardigan with an orange, brown and red flower pattern. She is wearing a white halter jumpsuit under it. SHe is standing between two medium sized pine trees with the sun shining down on her. Both of Claire's arms are raised. In her left hand is her white flower patterned cane and a pink tiny Japanese coin bag.

A 50 Percent Chance of Paralysis_Get Ahead of Life Before Life Gets Ahead of You_SistaCrea

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Sponsored by Dancing Queerly Boston, Claire faces her trauma by navigating physical and occupational therapy to be one of the 1% that can walk again after a high-risk lymphoma spinal tumor surgery. This showcase reflects how stereotypes, misogynoir, and expectations placed on Black women of the diaspora can manifest as health crises.

FEATURING A PLETHORA OF ART:

- ORIGINAL MUSIC COMPOSED BY AUSTRALIAN DISABLED AGENDER COMPOSER MEL CHILIANIS

- CLAIRE'S ORIGINAL SPOKEN WORD POEMS PAIRED WITH PERFORMANCE ART

- VISUAL NARRATIVES AND INTERVIEWS BETWEEN CLAIRE & HER DAUGHTER, CO-CREATOR AMARANTHIA SEPIA

Learn More About Claire on Her Speaker Page

Tiled background photo showcasing therapist and activist speakers

Our 2023 Event Speakers

Since we are disabled and immunocompromised, still masking, and "Still COVIDing," Our show included talks from Black activists - immunocompromised COVID Conscious Therapist Speaker Amanda McGuire, MC and Therapist Journee LaFond, Disability Speaker Jacquese Armstrong and a feature showcasing our art direction team.

Meet Our First Art Direction Team

Featuring Testimonials From Composer Mel Chilianis, Assistant Graphic Designer & Video Editor Nabila Nugroho, Script Editor and Outreach Coordinator Cristina Deptula & Assistant Art Director + Captioner Linlin Yu

Contact

General Inquiry
Art & Mind Inquiries
Virtual Workshop/Presentation Inquiries
Virtual Speaking Engagements
Virtual Media Interview

info@sistacreativesrising.com