This year, join us in celebrating trans families. The Tennessee Family as Freedom Project amplifies the way Black trans people practice freedom through family-making.
Artist Spotlight: Kah Yangni
Kah Yangni (she/they) is an illustrator living in Philadelphia, PA. They make hyper vibrant art about justice, queerness, and joy- using cut up paper, drawings, paint, and Photoshop to show a world where we are free. Kah’s art can be found on billboards, one 2,250 square foot mural, and on bedroom walls from West Philly to Iceland. Kah illustrated “Not He or She, I’m Me” by A.M. Wild, a 2024 Stonewall Book Award Honor Book. Kah also illustrated “The Making of Butterflies” by Zora Neale Hurston and Ibram X. Kendi. Her art has been covered by NBC News, Ebony Magazine, Mic, and them, and her poster work is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Trans Day of Resilience 2024: A Panel Discussion
For the last ten years, we have nurtured Trans Day of Resilience (TDOR), an annual art project that serves as a love offering to trans people of color everywhere and an intentional extension and re-imagining of Transgender Day of Remembrance. Every November, we come together to remember the trans kin we lost and to recommit for trans liberation.
This year, we are leaning into the urgent need to elevate the role of cultural workers within the reproductive justice movement. We held a virtual conversation with fellow trans and gender-expansive artists entitled “Art as Radical Power”. Together, they shared their lived experiences and visions for relationship building during a time when the sociopolitical climate is hostile towards our beloved siblings. We listened as they shared stories about the ways art is fueling and transforming the movement for reproductive justice and gender liberation. Participants had the opportunity to connect 1:1 and grow their artist network, and took away a deeper call to trans inclusion and equity within the movement for reproductive liberation.
Featured artists include:
- Bobby Sanchez (she/they), Artist, Poet, Musician
- FreeQuency (Free or they/them), Storyteller, Poet, Performance Artist
- Kah Yangni (she/they), Illustrator and Muralist
- Raffi Marhaba (they/them), Creative Director, Illustrator, Artivist
- Såhi Velasco (they/them), Artist, Illustrator, Facilitator
Join us in celebrating these artists and their work toward building a world where trans and gender-expansive people feel grounded, connected, empowered, and free.
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Honoring Trans Families
Trans love heals and liberates generations. Earlier this year we collected stories to celebrate the mamas who nurture and protect trans youth and defend the bodily autonomy of the children they love.
Poetry
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The future is whatever we name ourselves. Watch our words bloom into worlds.
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About
Founded with the Audre Lorde Project in 2014, the Trans Day of Resilience art project is an annual love offering to trans people of color everywhere. Led by Forward Together, its current name and spirit emerged from a 2015 call from New Orleans trans justice organization BreakOUT! to celebrate the resilience of our trans family.
November 20 marks Trans Day of Remembrance, an annual memorial for our murdered kin. The day gives us space to grieve the siblings—overwhelmingly Black trans women and femmes—who were pushed out of this world too soon.
Our rebellious mourning recommits us to the living. We refuse to forget or forfeit our power, even in the face of epidemic violence. We remember: we are pure possibility. Our freedom dreams could set the whole world free.
With art as our portal, we imagine and femifest the world we deserve. May this project, for and by trans people of color, help us see ourselves safe and cherished, rested and healed, fully alive. Let’s dream and shape an irresistible future together.
For press inquiries, please contact ChaKiara Tucker at chakiara@forwardtogether.org.
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TERMS OF USE: This art is free and available for you to use to spread a message of social justice. We welcome you to reproduce it and share it in your community. Please do not alter the image in any way and or offer these images for sale. Do not use or reprint the image in a publication or for commercial or institutional purposes without the permission of Forward Together. If you share the art on social media please tag Forward Together (@fwdtogether on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
There is no more art to display.