Aravani Art Project is an art collective led by trans and cis women in India that aims to strengthen the visibility of the LGBTQIA+ community. Its promoters explain what the project is about, which uses street art to denounce gender-based violence and postulate the struggle for the dignified lives of all people.

*By Aravani Art Project

We want to create a collective space for people from the transgender community by engaging them into public art and other interventions.

Our mission is to engage the community in a creative way and help society see the people from the transgender community in a new light.

We create safe spaces for the Transgender community through art. We examine their spaces of innovation, the places of their history and create room to learn by transforming this knowledge into public art.

The streets are a particularly important place to do our work, as it is in these public spaces that the bodies of Transgender identifying people attract violence, harassment, social negligence and pressure.

Our creative collective seeks to respond to these experiences by creating spaces that instead encourage exchange, discussion, openness and debate surrounding gender identities.

We are actively involved in everyday lives of some of the people from the Transgender community, so that we respect each-other’s lives, help with their mental health and build a stronger relationship based on friendship and trust.

The projects mainly involve the community to collaborate with other artists and fellow society to join as we paint a mural together to create social participation and a safe space for conversations.

Art meets activism as we paint about issues that prevail within the given geographical space.

Through our projects we intend to capture stories of freedom, dreams of acceptance and hoping for possibilities.

We hope to archive the cultural nuances like traditional practices, language, songs, myths and stories of the community, since it remains very vibrant and un-explored.

For more : https://aravaniartproject.com/

Image: Aravani Art Project