Wardell Milan Knight of the White Camelia No.5 , 2021, edition of 25

This limited edition is part of the Badass Art Women Awards: Futures Forward fundraiser by Project for Empty Space. A percentage of the sale proceeds will benefit Project for Empty Space.

The 2023 Badass Art Woman Awards: Futures Forward, honors three women who dynamically push culture forward by centering radical artists. Honorees include Sarah Arison, President of the Arison Arts Foundation, Kelly Huang, Co-Founder of the Gold Art Prize, and Legacy Russell, Executive Director & Chief Curator of The Kitchen.

This year’s Badass Art Woman Awards program is inspired by the work of Contemporary Feminist artists, such as Chitra Ganesh, Wangechi Mutu, and Firelei Baez (to name a few), who draw from the legacies of intersectional Futurisms. Specifically, it pulls from Afro and Asian futurist aesthetic-ideas from the late 1990s/early 00s. This framing runs parallel to PES’ forthcoming visionary space: PES-FUTURES, which will open in the fall of 2023 in New York City. This new space will host exhibitions and a hybridized virtual-in person residency program oriented around ‘Radical Futuremaking.’

About BAWA
The Badass Art Woman Awards (BAWA) emerged organically one day, several years ago, while chatting with several other cultural practitioners in our circle at an event. We noticed a general homogeneity in the types of people who are recognized in large institutional spaces. It was very apparent that many of the women cultural workers in our industry, particularly those who cross over multiple roles beyond artists (i.e. curators, gallerists, academics, writers, etc.), are often overlooked. Of course, there are occasions when women in the art world transcend into the mainstream realm, however, those instances are far too few. We wanted to create an award that brought in a true sense of celebration and joy — a ‘badass’ celebration! Thus, BAWA was born; a celebration of women who do phenomenal work within the contemporary art world.