Mission Statement
Femina Potens is a grassroots DIY Non-Profit Art Gallery and Performance space dedicated to promoting and educating women and transfolk in the arts. Femina Potens is run by a group of around 10 women and gender queer persons who volunteer their time and efforts every week. Femina Potens is an all ages non-discriminatory performance space, art gallery, and hub for exploring new art which resulted from a lack of representation of women and transgendered artists in the art scene of San Francisco. Femina Potens works diligently to celebrate and promote women, transgendered, and genderqueer artists in four major aspects: events, gallery, classes/workshops/community meetings, and the alternative library. Femina Potens events include experimental performances, art openings, live music shows, film screenings, theater productions, and GenderEnders (a monthly live music and spoken word event that aims to foster community among transgender, intersex, and genderqueer-identified performers). The purpose of all our events is to help artists gain exposure, to provide well and lesser-known genderqueer and female talent a venue to give back to their community, and to create a sense of empowerment within the queer arts community. Our in-house events are always all-ages and sliding scale in order to be as inclusive and as accessible as possible. Femina Potens has had the pleasure of presenting such acts and performers as Sini Anderson (founder of the queer spoken word collective Sister Spit), Annie Sprinkle (internationally recognized performance and visual artist), Katastrophe (queer transgendered hip hop artist), and Michelle Tea (author of Valencia and winner of the 2000 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction). Femina Potens Gallery exhibits a variety of up-and-coming talented women and transgendered artists working with various mediums including print work, painting, video, installation, and photo. Our past season featured emerging local queer artists Shelley Amrich (video), Molly Decoudreaux (photo), and Xan deVoss (photo), among others. For our next season, we will be incorporating well known and nationally exhibited artists including Elizabeth Stephens (San Francisco based photo and installation artist), Liz Young (LA based performance artist), Susan Robb (Seattle based mixed media artist), and our "East Coast vs. West Coast" exhibit will feature rising young female and transgendered artists from across the country. Femina Potens offers classes, workshops, and a community meeting space for women and trans-identified groups to share knowledge and skills with one another. Workshops we have conducted include tantric yoga, screen printing, anarchist crochet circles and knitting classes, weekly Ladyfest Bay Area planning meetings, creative writing workshops, fat activist meetings, radical relationship workshops, and D.I.Y. video production, to name a few. Femina Potens provides a safe space for queer, trans, genderqueer, and female persons of all ages to engage with one another in an empowering environment. It is important that queer youth have places to go to meet other people and feel a sense of solidarity in a city where most social spaces have an over 21 age requirement. We encourage queer youth to come to Femina Potens to acquire knowledge and skills in a supportive and empowering social setting. Our workshops are consciously inexpensive and are sliding scale so as to not exclude anyone from an educational and growing experience due to monetary constraints. The Femina Potens Alternative Library consists of books, zines, magazines, CDs, and videos entirely made by women and transgendered artists. Our library contains a wide range of resources and materials, including sexual education, visual arts, video art, poetry, fiction, feminism, anarchism and biographies. Femina Potens is accessible for youth to hang out and learn about queer and progressive movements lead by inspirational women and transgendered persons with whom they can relate, and avoid the feelings of alienation that queer, female and transgendered youth often encounter growing up. Our CD collection allows youth to discover music made by a variety of progressive musicians that avoid typical mainstream sounds and subject matter. Femina Potens is a community space that involves the opinions and input of San Francisco's artist community and those who support it. Make your voice heard! Goals * To foster a supportive network of female and transgendered artists * To encourage women and trans folks to voice their political and artistic views * To expand and celebrate our community of queer, genderqueer, transgendered, and female artists, family, and friends * To inclusively exhibit talented emerging and well seasoned artists of color, queer, female, and transgendered artists, young and old * To stimulate artistic growth in a non-hierarchical space free of ego * To share and learn from each other's artistic and political experiences and endeavors * To provide a safe and accessible venue for people of all genders, races, ethnicities, classes, ages, abilities, and sexual orientations * To offer queer and questioning youth resources and tools for education, empowerment, and expression * To increase the visibility of queer, genderqueer, transgendered, women and youth artists and activists, encouraging- through their voices and visions-acceptance, understanding, and education in the world * To create a space of constant movement and progression in art and in life
