Get Ready for Trans Art Fest!

Detail of Capital Hallucinations and Improbable Remedies (2024), by Earth Ængel
Steel, stained glass, resin, solder, patina, bio-wax, mica, pigment, perfume, gems 

This work will be on display in the Affordable Art Fair installation. 

BY EMMA CIESLIK March 7th, 2026

This upcoming April, the first Trans Art Fest will be held in New York City. It will encompass two months of grassroots arts programming led by all trans artists, organizers, and allies, from 12 all-trans art exhibitions and over 20 events across the city. After learning about the exhibition, I reached out to the Fest’s founder Carter Shocket, an artist and curator based in Brooklyn, to learn more about the impact and importance of this gathering of trans artists local to New York City and across the country. 

Shocket explained that this Fest came to be after he and his friend Alexia shared their dream “of creating a more robust network of artists in New York City that are helping each other, supporting each other, doing projects together, creating a strong community of visual artists.” For two summers, the pair put on a group show of all trans artists and while it was successful, it felt too confined and localized, so he decided to create a fringe-style festival, bringing together artists and creatives doing their own things around the city. 

Photos from exhibition Shocket curated at Eleventh Hour Art in 2024. Photos by Pat Plush.

Currently, 90 artists are showing their work in the upcoming Fest in exhibitions at the Affordable Art Fair NYC, The Haus of Collectives, Puffin Brooklyn, the Textile Art Center, Established Gallery, Eleventh Hour Art - East and West Galleries, Gallery 198. Shocket wanted to serve as a conduit, connecting artists who submitted their work--170 submissions were collected through his open call--with curators and galleries. 

He also worked in autonomous queer and trans organizations like Trans Film Collective, Baby Teeth Film Festival, Parents of Gender Expansive Kids, World Transsexual Forum, Sketchy Queers, Black Body Productions and more to bring together and platform existing trans creatives. The Fest is fiscally sponsored by Art Gowanus, which is one of the organizations hosting an exhibition, but it’s “very DIY,” Shocket explained.

“I don’t want it to become another institution that is then replicating what we are trying to build outside of,” Shocket said. 

The Fest’s purpose is three-fold--building the trans artistic community, opposing the recent escalation of anti-trans censorship in the art world and beyond, and also resisting the tokenization of trans people, especially trans people of color, in the art world. While some gallerists and their institutions in New York are eager to showcase trans artists, they often do so in limited, localized ways around Pride Month, rather than engaging meaningfully with artists, giving them a platform to showcase their three-dimensional art, and facilitating their exhibition as a way to connect with other artists. 

Ethereal (2024), by Kaden Bard Dawson

Cyanotype print

“Trans artists are shown during Pride,” Shocket said, “but it’s the Pride show. Nobody is in town, and it’s not a serious show in the season,so you’re not building the relationships with these artists or seeing them beyond what they can provide for you in that one specific way.”

And with the diversity of breadth of the Trans Art Fest, Shocket pushes beyond the surface-level engagement with trans artists' work. “It’s not ‘hey, you’ve never seen a trans person before. Here’s a self portrait. That is great, and it’s like step 0.001 of what is possible and exciting about trans people making art,” Shocket said. It’s important to him that for most of these exhibitions it is trans curators, trans gallerists, who are designing these shows, not a non-allied cis curator who is coming in to frame or reflect on a trans person’s work. 

Trans Art Fest aims to break free from arts institutions that seek to limit, sometimes unintentionally, their engagement with trans artists and their work. Instead of tailoring trans artists’ work to a largely cis audience, Trans Art Fest invites trans New Yorkers and people from outside of the city to revel in a community made by and for them, one that goes beyond a one-dimensional engagement with trans personhood and artistic practice. Trans Art Fest will be, as Shocket shared with me, a city-wide arts event showcases the breadth and talent of trans artists and creates a network between them across galleries, mediums, and genres so that trans artists, curators, collectors and publics can support and empower one another. 

a body (2023), by Morgan King

Fabric, paper, found and personal photographs sewn on plastic

As April gets closer and closer, I am excited to highlight five exhibitions and events I am most excited to attend for Trans Art Fest:

METAMORPHIC

Haus of Collectives, 2 Henshaw St, New York, NY 10034

March 31, 2026 from 12-8 pm

In partnership with Noir Renaissance, Trans Art Fest presents METAMORPHIC, an all-day art show celebrating trans and gender expansive artists. METMORPHIC explores the ways in which trans people have always existed and the trans experience for many that requires the courage, bravery, and liberation for a person to come out as and be authentically themselves. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Black Trans Liberation Kitchen.  

Alchemists

Eleventh Hour Art, 61 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11201

April 11-24, 2026

Opening reception on April 11th from 4-7 pm

Come see Shocket's exhibition featuring new work from 18 trans artists. Presesnted by Eleventh Hour Art and Trans Art Fest, Alchemists explores how queer bodies, lives, and desires emerge out of and affect the natural world. As Shocket wrote, "while the works are evidence of trans hands shaping the earth and offer a window into a queer connection to nature, they also reveal how trans bodies, desires, and lives transform the natural world into spaces of queer reverence." Through cyanotypes, stone sculpture, clay, glass, fiber, animal bones, and wax, the artists in this exhibition mold organics and metallics to create something new reflective of themselves and their own bodily creation. 

Gender Mend

Textile Arts Center, 505 Carroll Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215

April 18-26, 2026

Opening reception on April 18th from 1-4 pm

Gender Mend explores the ways in which trans and gender expansive people negotiate their pasts and presents through the textile arts. The exhibition will feature the work of Leo Pontius, Jules Kowalski, Solena Aguilar, and Transmissions Quilts, a project founded by textile artist Cordy Joan that handcrafts quilts for nominated trans lovers and friends. The opening reception will be held in conjunction with the exhibition at Puffin Foundation Brooklyn. 

Queer Figure Drawing

Brooklyn Pride Center, 1561 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225

April 23, 2026 from 5:45-7:45 pm

Join the Brooklyn Community Pride Center’s monthly LGBTQ+ Nude Figure Drawing workshop, facilitated by Charrow of Sketchy Queers. This is a figure drawing event hosted by and for the LGBTQ+ community, featuring mostly untrained models. The event, which is held every fourth Thursday of the month, explores and unpacks the challenges and joys of art modelling as a trans and gender expansive person. 

An Evening of Trans Cinema

Life World, 563 Johnson Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11237 (2nd floor)

May 6, 2026 from 6-10 pm

In partnership with the Trans Film Collective and Baby Teeth Film Festival, Trans Art Fest invites people to a night full of trans film. Cocktail hour will start at 6 pm with a screening and question and answer session from 7-8:30 pm. A mixer will follow from 8:30-10 pm. 

Also check out an evening screening of short films made by young trans filmmakers at Puffin Brooklyn the following night. 

These are just a small selection of all of the events and exhibitions scheduled for Trans Art Fest. Learn more about https://www.transartfest.com.