Project Healthy Minds and Artsy Announce Partnership In Celebration of Women’s History Month
Artsy presents “Impact: Project Healthy Minds,” a benefit auction supporting Project Healthy Minds and its mission to destigmatize mental health and expand access to mental health care
Mental health and art are deeply intertwined.
Art has the power to make us feel, think, and wonder. You can often find a mental health story behind the creation of your favorite works of art. In addition, the process of creating art can help us heal from trauma, quiet anxiety, and cope with depression.
That’s why we at Project Healthy Minds are thrilled to announce a new partnership with Artsy, the leading marketplace to discover, buy and sell fine art.
In celebration of Women’s History Month, Artsy has worked with all female-identifying curators to bring this incredible initiative to life.
A portion of proceeds from each sale will benefit Project Healthy Minds. The participating artists have committed to donate between 20% and 100% of their proceeds in an effort to help shatter the stigma of mental health together.
Explore the carefully curated collection here.
We hope you find the collection and the awesome artists behind each work inspiring.
Thanks to our friends at Artsy for supporting our mission!
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About the collection
From textiles to abstract canvases to figurative paintings, this sale spotlights 43 exemplary works by a group of emerging and critically acclaimed artists, including Lucia Hierro, Hank Willis Thomas, Marc Dennis, Bea Bonafini, and more. The works were hand-selected by curators Aindrea Emelife, Claudia Cheng, Hall W. Rockefeller, Marine Tanguy, Mollie Barnes, Samantha Ehrlich, Storm Ascher, and Susanna Gold.
Bidding in the auction will open on Tuesday, March 15th and close on Tuesday, March 29, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. EDT.
Meet the curatorial team
Founder, Less Than Half & the LTH Salon
“We touch the objects of our love...If...we reduce the necessity to form things ourselves, we grow lopsided,” wrote weaver Anni Albers in her 1965 book On Weaving.
Though the artists Lucia Hierro, Jordan Ann Craig, and Shenequa come from distinct visual traditions, they understand the meaning behind Albers’s words, as each uses textiles and craft to tell the stories of their communities, grounding their identities in tactile expression.
Shenequa draws from her childhood spent in an aunt’s beauty salon, where the braids, plaits, and knots in her elaborate weavings are expressions of the love and connection she found there. Then there is Lucia Hierro, whose research trips consist of walks around the block in her neighborhood to see the objects that give shape and comfort to the lives of her community, members of the Latin American diaspora, which she then translates into plush fabric and foam sculptures. The paintings of Jordan Ann Craig, meanwhile, marry her own cultural and visual landscape — specifically of beads and textile patterns of her Cheyenne heritage — with the austere story of Modernism, lending warmth and humanity to its cold remove.
I selected these artists as each expresses something unique about her environment, but — in using the universal language of textiles — is able to tie herself to the larger story of humanity.”
Art Advisor & Curator
“A prolonged period dominated by isolation and uncertainty has provoked a collective yearning for connection. The silver lining of this global upheaval is our metamorphosis as a community: to adapt and to support each other while the shore shifts beneath our feet. The selected artists reflect on the importance of hope and human interdependence during this period of forced separation. ‘Overlapped’ by Tizta Berhanu and ‘Relief’ by Cecilia Granara invite the viewer into moments of tenderness and intimacy, making the emotions we crave tangible in their work, while Bea Bonafini’s ‘Proposition for a Non-religious Chapel II’ calls for a meditative moment. Full of raw emotion and alluding to self-reflection, ‘Self-Portrait’ by Chantal Joffe was made in March 2020, retrospectively speaking to Joffe's yearning out of confinement and a hopefulness looking forward. Dedicated to supporting Project Healthy Minds, these works weave together optimism, meditation, and inclusivity to strike the universal chord of relevance.”
Curator, Art Historian, & Art Advisor
“My auctions selections for Project Healthy Minds collectively address mental health in a range of approaches. Artists Hank Willis Thomas and “Z the Rat” (Zeinab Diomande) both recognize their own personal traumas with brave honesty in their work, finding healing in community, family, and creativity. Betty Woodman’s light-filled, dancing abstraction describes the exuberant joy that we all strive to attain; and Michele Kishita offers us a peaceful respite through the sounds and sensations that her open, abstract landscapes evoke. These selections are intentionally broad in scope. They include established, midcareer, and emerging artists of varying backgrounds and heritages, as well as a mix of conceptual and abstract work at different scales and price points. By providing a coherent body of work that can appeal to all different kinds of collectors, I hope to give every Artsy viewer an opportunity to support Project Healthy Minds through their search for excellent creative work.”
Art Advisor & Curator
“Study for From a Close Distance" by Marc Dennis, was driven by the artist's desire of getting close to his favorite painting in New York and his frustration that he was unable to experience the painting in person, due to Museum closures and the isolation of quarantine.
The feeling of isolation can turn into loneliness, which has tremendous effects on one's mental health. Through the medium of watercolor, both relaxing and fluid in its nature, Dennis is pursuing a cathartic experience, as well as a window into the feeling of personal company that was so longed and lost throughout the pandemic.”
Independent Curator
“It was an honour to be invited by Artsy and Project Healthy Minds to select artists for this valuable auction. Ariane, Catherine and Ayobola’s work all speak to me of a time of peace, reflection and understanding. The works they have donated reflect these ideas. We are delighted to support such important work, especially during these times.”
CEO, MTArt Agency
“I am so honoured to be working alongside these artists and can never take it for granted, especially in support of Project Healthy Minds. Delphine Diallo is redefining women's portraiture, Elisa Insua is leading the future of the circular economy in the arts, Jesu Moratiel is a little genius, and the works of Robert Montgomery are the wisdom we all need right now.”
Founder, Superposition Gallery
“I was very moved by the mission statement and goals that Project Healthy Minds has developed. Their three main goals are to end the stigma related to mental health, make resources more accessible, and make mental health everyone’s business. I was inspired to bring on artists who make meditative works— such as Alteronce Gumby’s watercolors —and works that make you realize you’re not alone, such as Bryan Fernandez’ mixed media paintings.
Gumby’s featured watercolor has hues of calming blue, and the medium itself gives way to relaxation and meditation. Fernández paintings depict men spending time together and simply enjoying one another’s company—one while partaking in a shisha smoke sesh, and another enjoying a couple beers while sitting on alcohol crates. To me, in this context, it highlights the importance of breaking down the stigma of drug and alcohol use in communities of color so that it can make room for joy and healing.”
Independent Curator
“Alia Ali looks at how textiles express our inner selves and posits the idea of textiles as a language, whilst also exploring the notion and power of seeing and being seen that takes on many meanings pertaining to the gaze, social culture and politics. She seeks to highlight those who have been made invisible so we can understand the power that being seen truly holds. Alia is authentic – she collaborates with each community's most experienced, nuanced and creative communicators. She is a storyteller using the subjects' own visual language – themselves and their dress. She gives agency to the personal, the political - the internal and eternal.”
