this artist celebrates the fat, black trans experience

The TDR.co’s homepage is filled with beautiful artwork. Today’s artwork was by Ashleigh Shackelford who is a proud Black fat, trans femme whose work spans between visual art and writing in honor of Trans Day of Remembrance. In collaboration with SNaP CO., Ashleigh Shackelford  created a portrait displaying different, beautiful fat black femme bodies against a celestial, city background.

AFROPUNK got to speak with the artist about her inspiration, “I wanted to be extra as fuck in how I created the narrative and look through the art.” She continues, “Aesthetically I would say I was inspired by the flamboyance of Black trans people. Thinking about all the work it takes because of how we show up in the world and how we really have to build that ourselves from scratch because the world really strips that autonomy from us.”

 

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Ashleigh Fucking Shackelford, 2018.A post shared by Ashleigh Shackelford (@ashleighthelion) on Aug 27, 2018 at 1:08pm PDT

It takes a powerful artist with a radical vision to transform experience of oppression into striking images and Shackelford does so vibrantly and effortlessly, “I was really thinking about the extra-ness that came with being black and trans, and what that looks like and the embodiment of that including how we show up in makeup and clothes.”

You can follow Ashleigh Shackelford’s work on Twitter and Instagram at @AshleighTheLion and read Shackelford’s artist statement and get a free HQ download of her work here.