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Who We Are and what we do_

Aravani Art Project aims to embrace the people from the Transgender Community, friends from the LGBTQIA+ communities and a few cis - allies by creating consciousness, well being through art, awareness & social participation. Aravani Art Project is a Trans-women and cis-women led art collective that aims to create a space for people from the Transgender Community, to come together to create, collaborate and work on several Artistic projects. Our work of art happens in collaboration with Transgender artists who have been trained to paint and execute commissioned art projects.

Vision:

Aravani Art Project is a Trans-women and cis-women led art collective. While the visibility of Transgender people, Gender non- confirming people and folks from the queer community is increasing in popular culture and daily life, they still face everyday discrimination, stigma and systemic inequality. Aravani Art Project's mission is to bring about change in the way the society views the LGBTQIA+ community by advocating the idea of reclaiming spaces in this world through different art projects and raising awareness to create a voice for the community through the Arts.

Mission :

  • We advocate the idea of reclaiming spaces in this world by creating different art projects to raise awareness and to create a voice for the community.
  • We are finding magical ways to engage with the people from the Transgender community and other LGBQIA+ people to come out in the public spaces and feel confident, safe and belonged.
  • We are slowly working with cis- women from other marginalized communities and the informal sector to widen our spectrum of intersectionality and it is a need of the hour.
  • We create safe spaces for alternate voices through art. We examine their spaces of innovation, the places of their history and create room to learn by transforming this knowledge into a form of public art. The streets are a particularly important place to do our work, as it is in these public spaces that the bodies of Transgender identifying people attract violence, harassment, social negligence and pressure. Cis - women and young girls from other marginalized groups are also vulnerable and susceptible to unsafe situations.
  • Our mission seeks to respond to various lived experiences, stories and real life situations by creating spaces that encourage exchange, discussion, openness and debate surrounding gender identities using art as a tool.

The visibility of the transgender figure has begun to disrupt long-held beliefs about gender and the ways we organize our lives around categories of gender. By making art together we are seeking to gently reshape the politics of inclusion and exclusion that surround gender identities.

The struggle for accepting and understanding the identities of Transgender individuals exists in each society, race, and class.This includes, a friendly bonding for women and trans-women to indulge into public art making.

The Transgender community all over the world are in need of support, exposure and most importantly art.

We also want to recognize the strengths in the arts and find an alternative source of income for the transgender community through freelance art and design projects. In doing so, we develop organizational skills and advocate social change by raising community awareness in public places.

We have a passion for art as a social practice. Through our creative collaborations we want to raise awareness of the social possibilities of art making and the conversations that it enables.

HOW WE WORK_

To begin with : We work in two parts -

As a registered Non - Profit organization called Aravani Art Society, Registered under the Society Act, 1960.

As a for - profit collective of artists who make a living using the arts as a main source of livelihood.

The work - love relationship we share with our friends from the Transgender, gender non-confirming, and cis women from other marginalized communities, enables us to understand and work at a grass root level. By this we learn to respect and accept each-other’s lives, interests and build a stronger relationship based on friendship and trust. Art binds us together in magical ways.

The projects mainly involve the people from the community collaborating with other communities, companies, government institutions and fellow societies from geographically different spaces. We together create a space for social participation and a safe space for conversations. We find different ways and methods of practicing intersectional feminism and de-mystifying stigma in a very natural way.

With the work we do we aim to instill a sense of responsibility towards the various issues and themes that we need to be conscious about. We learn together about how collaborations can make space for making way for the people from various communities to occupy space in the world of art. We learn from the challenges and celebrations by bridging the gap between the differences in the society. Through our projects we intend to capture stories of freedom, dreams of acceptance and hoping for possibilities. We hope to archive the cultural nuances like traditional practices, language, songs, myths and stories of the community, since it remains very vibrant and un-explored.

It takes a different set of practices, thinking, training and time to allow the people from the community to understand amongst themselves that there are so many beautiful untold stories, experiences, practices, culture, way of life, traditions, songs and the list never stops. Of course, we take help from experts and people who know/have the skills required to do so in the most effective manner.