Exhibition as Advocacy
April 22, 2019
Emerging Curator, local to the Triad and Charlotte areas, is producing a major art exhibition to advocate for the Trans community in North Carolina by coordinating workshops in all the major cities throughout this summer. Being produced through his creative startup, JTR Presents, Jordan T. Robinson is going from city to city calling all North Carolinians for community support for our trans neighbors. This exhibition, "Transparency" is a response to a variety of incidents throughout American culture, including the executive order to ban and dismiss Trans Soldiers from duty, which went into effect April 14th of this year. Robinson, currently investigating the expanding value of Art & Design, felt a need to raise awareness of the community.
"This is an exhibition about representation and how it affects reality…" Robinson explains, "…and I believe it best if the community tells us who they are in their own voice and light. So, I want to use art to create a platform that amplifies their stories and the call for community support to help our fellow North Carolinians, who happen to also be trans."
So far, Robinson has been able to collaborate with local businesses and organizations that serve the LGBTQIAPK communities of Charlotte, Greensboro, and is seeking to collaborate with others in Durham, Asheville, Greenville, Wilmington, Winston-Salem, and Raleigh. Robinson is collaborating with these entities to host local "workshops" in each of the major cities of North Carolina, where artists and members of the Trans communities will come together and create works of art that help tell the stories of transgender human lives in North Carolina. Following these workshops, a huge exhibition, featuring a maximum of one hundred works of art, will take place in Raleigh, with Asheville as a contingency plan. Robinson is still looking for a gallery in Raleigh to host the exhibition which he plans to have happen in the month of November to commemorate Trans Day of remembrance in November 20th.
The workshops will begin in June 2019 and continue in various places until October of this year. One such workshop will take place at GreenHill in Greensboro, NC June 22 & 23 from 1pm - 5pm in the galleries studios. Others locations include Comic Girl Coffee in Charlotte, NC June 15 & 16 from 10am to 3pm. More workshop dates and times will be announced as they are confirmed on JTR Present's Facebook page and newsletter for those who subscribed.
In his search of expanding the value of the Arts, Robinson already is planning another exhibition in 2020 to use art as a social influencer and community-building tool. More information can be found via the site below: