T his month, while millions of protesters across the country decry “No Kings,” JusticeAid celebrates all the Queens, regardless of identity or gender, who live, love, resist, and rebel through their art. We recognize the right of every individual to be free to live their authentic life, free from oppression and suppression; to exist, to struggle, to grow, and to thrive with dignity and with Pride.
Music
Listen to Diamond’s “I Am Her.”
I Am Her by Shea Diamond
Shea Diamond is a soul/R&B singer-songwriter and transgender activist whose art has been described as “demonstrating a rare gift to portray raw, dynamic emotion in a way that moves the body as much as the spirit.”
Diamond found her voice as a songwriter while serving a 10-year sentence in a men’s prison. In her own words: “I was born into a gender role that I did not accept & I didn’t feel like myself. Desperate to find the financial means to transition to my true gender…
“There’s an outcast in everybody’s life and I am her.”
From “I Am Her”
Film
Queen & Slim
Directed by Melina Matsoukas and with a screenplay by Lena Waithe from a story by James Frey and Waithe. Queen & Slim received the 2020 BET Award for Best Picture.
Screenwiter Lena Waithe brings to life this 2019 American romantic road crime drama film that centers on a young couple (Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith) who go on the run after killing a police officer, in self-defense, in the heat of an argument during a traffic stop that had quickly escalated.
In his New York Times review, author Carvell Wallace speaks to the fugitives’ task of “chasing a freedom that is always farther ahead of them than death is behind them….a spiritual state of being that many black people in America understand in our souls, because those circumstances lie in wait around every corner and have for centuries.”
Art
Jennifer Packer
Art
Jennifer Packer
Jennifer Packer is a Brooklyn-based contemporary artist whose paintings and drawings suggest a sensitivity to the inner lives of Black people. Rendered in loose line and brush stroke using a limited color palette, her intimate portraits of family and friends, along with her interiors and still lifes, slide between the fidelity of depiction and the freedom of abstraction.
Her work clearly celebrates, defends, and memorializes Black lives.“My inclination to paint,” Packer said, “especially from life, is a completely political one. We belong here. We deserve to be seen and acknowledged in real time. We deserve to be heard and to be imaged with shameless generosity and accuracy.”
Packer was most recently featured in a 2021-2022 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.
Jennifer Packer is a Brooklyn-based contemporary artist whose paintings and drawings suggest a sensitivity to the inner lives of Black people. Rendered in loose line and brush stroke using a limited color palette, her intimate portraits of family and friends, along with her interiors and still lifes, slide between the fidelity of depiction and the freedom of abstraction.
Her work clearly celebrates, defends, and memorializes Black lives.“My inclination to paint,” Packer said, “especially from life, is a completely political one. We belong here. We deserve to be seen and acknowledged in real time. We deserve to be heard and to be imaged with shameless generosity and accuracy.”
Packer was most recently featured in a 2021-2022 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.
Featured Writing
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audrey Lorde
A self-described “Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet,” Audrey Lorde (1934–1992) dedicated her life and talents to examining the interconnectedness of human struggles.
In this collection of Lorde’s inspiring nonfiction prose, she examines topics such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and intersectionality. Through her writings, Lorde encourages readers to confront their own feelings of privilege and complicity in oppression, and to recognize the necessity of action.
