Queer|Art announces latest award winners

October 25, 2022 Queer Forty Staff 3 min read

Awards honor queer artists across generations with the winners to be celebrated at the 2022 Queer|Art Annual Party at The Whitney Museum on November 10.

Queer|Art, New York City’s home for the creative and professional development of LGBTQ+ artists, has announced the winners of two of its biggest annual awards. Writer, educator, and activist Alexis De Veaux is the winner of the 2022 Pamela Sneed Award for Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Artists and Organizers. And orator and community leader Wendi Moore-O’Neal is the winner of the 2022 Queer|Art|Prize for Sustained Achievement. Both artists are based in New Orleans.

Four additional artists—stefa marin alarcon, Marie Amegah, Uhuru Moor, and Grace Rosario Perkins—have been named as the finalists of the 2022 Queer|Art|Prize for Recent Work. Winners for all three awards will receive a $10,000 cash prize; and new this year, each Finalist for the Queer|Art|Prize for recent work will also receive $5,000. All three awards are made possible with support from HBO Max.

De Veaux, Moore-O’Neal, and the four Recent Work Prize finalists will be honored in a public ceremony—The 2022 Queer|Art Annual Party, Queer|Art’s biggest event of the year—on November 10th, 7pm streaming Live from The Whitney Museum of American Art. The ceremony will be hosted by activist/drag artist Junior Mintt, and also occasions the reveal of the winner for the 2022 Queer|Art|Prize in the category of Recent Work, as well as the graduation of the 2022 Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellows. An After Party emceed by Cecilia Gentili with DJ sets by Body Hack artists Cisne and NYMPH will immediately follow, beginning at 8:45pm.

The Pamela Sneed Award for Black Queer|Art|Mentorship Artists and Organizers

This award was founded in 2021 to acknowledge Black Mentors and Fellows from the Queer|Art|Mentorship (QAM) community who uplift critical histories of Black queer mentorship and exemplify steadfast commitment to values shared by the QAM community. This year, judges included celebrated writers, artists, and filmmakers, including Justin Allen, Pamela Sneed, and Stephen Winter. The award is accompanied by a $10,000 cash prize, and the winner will be honored during the Queer|Art Annual Party, in conjunction with the Queer|Art Prize ceremony.

This year, Allen, Sneed, and Winter recognize multihyphenate writer, educator, and activist, New Orleans-based author and 2021 Queer|Art Mentor Alexis De Veaux (Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde, 2004; Yabo, 2014) as a “pioneering force” within the queer community:

“Alexis De Veaux is a pioneering force within the LGBTQIA community. Her expansive practice is wide-ranging: from poetry and journalism to children’s literature. Alexis has made invaluable contributions to the queer community across mediums. As a writer, educator, and public speaker, Alexis’s longstanding dedication to mentorship is clear across fields and generations. To be in the presence of her generous wisdom and infectious spirit is to be inspired.”

2022 Queer|Art Prize For Sustained Achievement

In the area of Sustained Achievement, the 2022 Queer|Art|Prize has been awarded to Wendi Moore-O’Neal, who also is based in New Orleans, where she is a recognized community leader. The 2022 Sustained Achievement panel of judges—Barbara Browning, Lia Gangitano, and Alicia Grullon—remarked on Moore-O’Neal’s commitment to organizing and storytelling within Black queer communities in the South:

“In the words of the nominator, “Wendi Moore-O’Neal [is] a Black Feminist butch dyke from New Orleans, Louisiana. She uses story circles, theater, performance, and song sharing… as tools for growing inspiration and building democratic processes… Wendi has made profound positive impacts on southern queer community…” Our choice for awarding Wendi comes from prioritizing a different kind of art making rooted in the traditions found in the Queer community which push up against hetero-normative partiarchial capitalist structures.” –Browning, Grullon, and Gangitano

Queer|Art Prize For Recent Work

Finalists for the Recent Work award, which honors specific projects completed between 2021 and 2022, include artists working in a number of different mediums. Each artist will receive a $5,000 award, and the winner, to be revealed at the Queer|Art Annual Party, will receive an additional $5,000.