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Source: Jordyn Jay and the women of the BTFA. Photographer: Eve Harlow
Jordyn Jay firmly believes that one of the direct paths to liberation lies through the arts and culture, which is evident in her work with the Black Trans Femmes in the Arts Collective (BTFA).
As the founder of the organization, Jay is on a mission to ensure that the world understands just how much the Black trans community serves as a blueprint for many of the trends the world sees in pop culture and beyond.
“I was inspired while I was getting my master’s degree in art politics,” Jay told Madamenoire. “I was looking for a way to connect with my community. I was so sequestered as a master student, you know, it was such a demanding and rigorous program that I didn’t have time to connect with the community outside of NYU,” she continued. “At the time, I didn’t have a community of Black trans girls that attended NYU, so I kept in my classroom searching for that, through research, through talking with professors. I wanted to talk about the work of Black trans artists. I wanted to read about the work of Black trans artists, and nobody could point me in the right direction.”
Her desire for connection led to her taking matters into her own hands, using her longng to get in touch with the landscape of artists who looked like her that were working and living, and doing the work that she’s been passionate about since the beginning of time as a catalyst for hosting her very own meet up for Black trans fems that worked in the arts.
“From that very first meeting, it was so clear how needed the space was. There was a young trans girl who was just starting in her transition, and she said that seeing a flyer calling for Black trans femmes in the arts was the first time she felt safe to leave her apartment and come and be in a public space for three months,” Jay recalled. “There was an older trans woman in her 40s who had grown up in New York in the drag and ballroom scene who said that even she had never seen a space that was specifically for Black trans fems in the arts, and so they all really wanted this work to continue and to move forward, and we just started to organize.”
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