Agitprop! was a show at the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at The Brooklyn Museum (2016). Opening with twenty artists in the first wave, those artists/collectives nominated twenty artists/collectives for the second wave. The second wave nominated artists/collectives for the third wave.

Dyke Action Machine (Sue Schaffner and Carrie Moyer), a collective in the first wave, nominated me to exhibit my work in the second wave.

For my nomination, I wanted to form a collective that continued the legacy of political feminist art and created work that existed in and out of the institution. Visual AIDS, is doing provocative and critical work work in NYC, producing exhibitions, panels, and events that open dialogues about the on-going AIDS epidemic and to support artists living with HIV and preserve the legacies of those that have passed away.

An on-going project of Visual AIDS has been their PLAY SMART series: small packets that contain condoms, lube and three different cards. These "pin-up" cards list information pertaining to HIV/AIDS. Visual AIDS has produced five editions of PLAY SMART cards.

The collective, formed in collaboration, with Visual AIDS produced the sixth edition of PLAY SMART centering women and femme identified people for the third wave of Agitprop. Too often women/trans and GNC people and their health concerns are sidelined when it comes to the on-going AIDS epidemic.  Agitprop! provided an opportunity to create a project that would be part of an exhibition and circulates knowledge, art, activism and safer sex tools into the outside world. This tactic circles back to collectives like Dyke Action Machine who plastered their art in the street as an act of political visibility in the 1990s. 

Furthermore, this project presented the opportunity to assemble an exceptional group of artist/activist collaborators: Beverly Bland Boydston III, Kia LaBeija, Tourmaline, Sarinya Srisakul, and Jessica Whitbread. Artist collaborators Alice O'Malley and Sue Schaffner (who is one half of Dyke Action Machine, and brings the project full circle) provided some of the photography. Additionally, artworks of LaBeija and Whitbread are featured on four of the nine cards. 

When brainstorming about the project with Jessica Whitbread, Beverly Bland Boydston III, Kia LaBeija, and Alex Fialho, Programs Manager of Visual AIDS, we decided that the information on the back of the cards would address prevention and testing, information about prevention specifically for women of trans experience, and the connections between reproductive justice and HIV. We also wanted the packet to celebrate desire and be resolutely sex positive. Though this particular edition centers women, it felt important that the packs be accessible to people of many diverse and unique sexualities, genders, and physiques. Along with external condoms and lube, these safer sex/desire packs also include an internal condom.

Elizabeth Marie Rivera did the graphic design for the cards and Jean Foos designed a Play Smart Poster that was displayed in the exhibition. Collaborators in Jessica's artworks are listed in the artist roster for the piece--they are Morgan Page and Jamie Q from Canada and Tania Anderson from the US. 

Part of my motivation for this project was to get as many trans, cis and gender non conforming women into the museum as possible and to get them PAID. I wanted to throw off the usual disparities of who is represented in museums and the economic injustice that comes with it.

An event in conjunction with the Play Smart project, WOMEN, ART, AIDS AND ACTIVISM: HERE THEN, HERE NOW, occurred on June 4th, 2016. This was an intergenerational and multimedia evening of performance, presentations, and dialogue highlighting the experiences of women artist-activists from the 1980s to the present. Women, Art ,AIDS and Activism featured Joy Episalla (ACT UP), Kia Labeija (GrenAIDS), Jessica Whitbread (ART AIDS ACTION), Egyptt Labeija (TransJustice, Audre Lorde Project), Sue Schaffner and Carrie Moyer (Dyke Action Machine).