From: Friends, To: Friends

Part 1: The Benefit Auction

Larry Ossei-Mensah on the launch of a benefit auction to support artists, curators, and cultural workers of colour.

Leveraging the power of art as an agent for social change and cultural transformation is the mission of ARTNOIR’s co-founder and international curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, who with his latest initiative, is inviting people to become agents of change in the art industry.

In partnership with Artsy, ARTNOIR From: Friends To: Friends Benefit Auction aims to raise funds for the newly launched ARTNOIR Jar of Love Fund, a microgrant initiative intended to provide relief for artists, curators, and cultural workers of colour. The funds from the auction will enable ARTNOIR to expand their aid and support to a wider group of recipients for the microgrant. Moreover, the proceeds raised from this auction will help empower, and fuel the lives of grantees who are essential contributors to the creative ecosystem.

In the first part of the interview, we discuss Larry’s new initiative as well as the importance of supporting POC creatives.

Boy Wonder by Patrick Quarm — *Boy Wonder by* *Patrick Quarm*

What is the story behind the foundation of ARTNOIR?

ARTNOIR was started in 2013, and it really came out of friendship and relationships. It started with art field trips between friends, going to the Barnes foundation, to Art Basel, to the Venice Biennale, etc. We realised that there was a need for an entity that would really uplift and celebrate the work of black and brown creatives, in the visual arts, performance art, and in the literary arts.

For me, whether you’re Black, Arab, Latin, Latinx, Asian, you’re part of my community. I really think about non-whites males who tend to dominate a lot of the narrative. With ARTNOIR, we wanted to create dynamic real life experiences by setting up studio visits, exhibition visits, performances, trips. For example, we went to Johannesburg in 2016 for Black Portraiture. We also organised a dinner with artists, entrepreneurs and different creatives from Johannesburg who normally wouldn’t come together. Even the food selection was part of the experience, as it was a culinary journey of the diaspora, with food from South Africa, food from Haiti, food from southern Spain with African influences.

Over the last seven years we became a formal non-profit organisation. Nobody from the organisations takes a salary. We’re not doing this to make money. Personally, we’re really doing this to serve our community. So all the money that is donated and brought in is put right back into the community in the best way we can. Within this moment of COVID-19, George Floyd protests, fighting against systematic oppression, police brutality, our work has become even more urgent.

ARTNOIR’s mission is to celebrate and highlight the work of creatives of colour from around the world. How do you measure success?

We’ve been able to measure it just by direct feedback. Every Thursday, from 5pm to 5:30pm, we do virtual studio visits with different artists, and it’s been interesting to watch that audience grow.

It’s been interesting to see artists reach out to me to me and say” hey, someone saw the visit and is interested in buying a painting or learning more about my work”. We’ll get comments from people in our community that found the studio visit really amazing and inspiring. So it’s more qualitative than quantitative.

We also measure it through the partnerships we’ve been able to garner. We’ve been able to have a lot of different institutions, brands, artists, individuals and groups that see what we do and want to collaborate. Our instagram page within the last month has doubled, partly because people were at home, but also because we are providing experiences that are nourishing and affirming. I think by having that many people following us and inspired by what we’re doing says a lot.

How did the ARTNOIR Jar of Love Fund come to life?

There was research done that says that two thirds of artists, art practitioners, cultural workers are unemployed or will become unemployed or under-employed as a result of the impact of COVID-19. Most people are working 2 or 3 jobs - someone will be working as an artist, but also as an administrator and art educator to make ends meet. Out of the $2 trillion U.S. stimulus package bill that was created, only $250M was allocated towards the arts.

What we realise is that our community was in need of support, a way to relieve some of the burden. We saw colleagues that were doing grants for $1000, $5000 and $10,000 - but we preferred the notion of micro-grants. The idea for me stemmed from thinking about the concept of micro-finance and reading about the work of Mohammed Yunus: a community is stimulated and thrives when the woman is grounded. A micro-grant could help artists buy material, groceries, or support themselves in a way.

We don't have the resources to throw all the money at it, but we can support as many people as possible. We want to focus on POC artists, curators and cultural workers. The grant is $500 and is unrestricted. It will be on a rolling basis (no deadline). We’ll be launching it this month and the goal is to be able to provide these grants until the end of the year. We will then reevaluate and see if it’s something we will continue, shift or change.

Why is it important for you to specifically focus on POC artists and creatives?

POC artists and creativity have been the bedrock for cultural production not only in the US, but around the world. We’ve made a point to uplift, celebrate and educate our communities of this fact. For so long, POC artists weren’t getting their proper due respect and now as we’ve reached an inflection point it has become imperative to honour the paradigm shift. By supporting POC artists and the POC art ecosystem we are supporting the journey towards justice, liberation and equity for all people.

How many applicants do you wish to support with the Jar of Love Fund?

As many as we can. We’ve been able to start with $5000 dollars that came from donations from our community. Now we partnered with Artsy to do this online auction, and proceeds from that will go to fund the Jar of Love.

Normally with charity auctions, the artists don’t get anything except maybe a tax write-off for the value of materials. With charity auctions, the artist has to really believe in the mission of the organisations and the mission of the actual initiative. When we started talking to the artists in regards to participating in ARTNOIR's benefit auction, we wanted to offer them all a 30% commission on the sale of their work. Some have elected to forego their commissions and have all the proceeds go to the Jar of Love Fund which is a blessing.

Most importantly, all the artists in the auction are artists we have a personal relationship with. We were lucky to have an incredible group of artists from all around the world who believe in the work we’re doing, they believe in the mission of the fund and want to support it. For us it was really about community, that’s why it's called from friends to friends. It was about the community coming together to serve the community.

Another key component of what we do is education. Educating the next generation of patrons, that look like us. Creating a space that’s safe, where they don't feel intimidated because they might not know the lingo of the art world. As you know, the art world has been designed to be exclusionary and people become reticent to participate.

For me, people of colour are just as obliged to participate as the next person, particularly when it comes to supporting artists of colour - because these are our stories, our narratives and our perspectives. It was important that we had a spectrum of price points but also a spectrum of practices and approaches. That’s why we have artists from India, Ghana, the United States, and the Dominican Republic, to name a few countries represented. It really shows the fullness of our ecosystem, and it allows us to be of service.

We will continue the program as long as funds are available. This is why we are doing the auction but also inviting people to donate directly to the fund so we can keep the micro-grant program running as long as possible. The project is an A/B test. It’s not going to be perfect but we will continue to improve it through dialogue and listening to people in our community, getting insights so it’s the best form of support it can be.

Can you walk us through the selection process?

Applications will be evaluated on a need basis and on a case by case scenario. The process will be blind as we are not looking at the names, but rather at the vocation and the needs. We’ll do our best to support as many people as possible.

We also want to ensure that the applicants are working artists, because if they are hobbyists then it means that they are deriving their income from something else. So this is for people who really need the resources and for whom it will be an injection for, not only financially but emotionally. I have a number of friends who have been laid off, furloughed or whose projects have been cut, and it does take an emotional toll. People are in a space of anxiety that don’t feel comfortable sharing that.

The mission is to be able to relieve some of the burden and really support the people who make our society amazing: It's the artists, the curators, the cultural workers, the thinkers, who really push us to be better as humans.

The unfortunate thing, particularly in the United States, is that they’re the least supported from a governmental standpoint. We don’t have a Ministry of Culture in the States, as opposed to other countries. There’s still a lot of debate on how art is valued, artists are valued and the artistic community is valued especially folks of colour. So for us, this was also a way to say “we see you, we value you, we’re doing our part to support, because you supported us”.

We continue the conversation with Larry Ossei-Mensah and on his journey in the art world and stance on diversity in the second part of this interview.