History

Femina Potens, which means “powerful woman” in Latin, is a community-building multidisciplinary arts organization conducting programs that authentically explore the experiences of queer women, transgender people and others living outside the female-male gender binary.

Femina Potens originated in the Do-It-Yourself arts movement that first appeared at Cell Space around the Millennium. Madison Young first founded Femina Potens in 2000 at the age of 20. The organization quickly started providing art exhibits, workshops,film screenings and poetry readings in venues that ranged from laundry mats to large warehouse spaces.

From 2003 to 2007, Femina Potens rented a storefront in the Mission where we organized almost 300 performing, visual, literary, media arts and educational programs. In 2004, Femina Potens formed an Artistic Advisory Board and secured fiscal sponsorship from the Queer Cultural Center.  In 2005, the organization received our first government grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.

In June 2007, Femina Potens leased a storefront at Sanchez and Market Streets. At this venue, a small grant from Southern Exposure and the support of the Zellerbach Foundation enabled Femina Potens to launch the City’s first LGBT site-specific public arts program. Our small space visibly established the presence of the queer arts community on Market Street and expanded LGBT community access to and participation in the arts. The Gallery provided young and emerging queer women and transgender visual artists the opportunity to reach their target audiences.

In fall 2010, Femina Potens closed its Castro District venue, where the monthly rent had been rising and threatening the organizations sustainability. Founder, Madison Young, decided at that time that in order to save the organization it was best to leave the venue and persue collaboration with allied LGBT and arts organizations.
Since that time we have staged our programs at different rented venues including Viracocha, the Center for Sex and Culture, Mission Control, Michelle Oconnor Gallery, Tall Tree Tambo, and Blue Dahlia.

In Spring of 2011, Femina Potens launched its newest program, FP Family, which is focused on programs, resources, performances, and art for and about queer family dynamics and queer youth.

In July 2011, Femina Potens moved its headquarters to an artist studio in the Mission.  This space serves as an incubator for creating programming and workshopping new art works which are exhibited and programmed at larger existing public venues.    To date, Femina Potens has organized approximately 125 curated exhibitions featuring queer women and transgender visual artists, most of them under 40 years old.

For the past 4 years, Femina Potens has curated and installed exhibitions in commercial businesses, health clinics, cultural centers and social service agencies frequented by queer clienteles. These exhibitions heighten the artists’ visibility, significantly expand and diversify our audiences and generate arts sales income that financially supports our community’s outstanding visual artists.

In 2009-10, Femina Potens installed at least 30 curated exhibitions in off-site locations, connecting our community’s outstanding visual artists to the queer and progressive audiences most likely to purchase their original work.
Femina Potens’ exhibitions have explored important issues confronting the LGBT community such as homophobia and transphobia, gender identity, global warming, censorship, suicide prevention, domestic abuse, breast cancer, safer sex and body image. All of our exhibitions include an opening reception and an artist talk or panel discussion exploring the work’s expressive strategies and content.

We have also produced approximately 50 cross-generational “Sizzle!” programs that have presented emerging performers and writers on the same stage with established LGBT women artists. Femina Potens has conducted numerous media arts programs as well as educational programs such as artist talks, panel discussions and workshops on a wide range of topics.  Our most recent project was Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens’ “The Ecosexual Manifesto,” an installation and two-day symposium at the Center for Sex and Culture held in collaboration with the 2011 National Queer Arts Festival.

Since 2003, Femina Potens has organized arts events in collaboration with the Asian American Women Artists Association, CUAV, Stop AIDS, LYRIC, the National Queer Arts Festival, Sister Spit, Fresh Meat Productions, Radar Productions and many others.  We have presented artists such as Beat writer Diane di Prima, well-known lesbian writers Jewelle Gomez and Michelle Tea, internationally recognized comedian, actress, and musician Margaret Cho, and transgender writer and USC professor Jack Halberstam.

In June 2009, Femina Potens organized four evenings of presentations featuring Queer Native American writers, media artists and performers.

Before Femina Potens opened our doors, the audiences we serve only rarely had the opportunity to attend thoughtful artistic explorations of their lives. The community’s ongoing participation and support confirms our belief in the important role the arts play in the construction of a diverse and healthy community. Our programs have significantly diversified the kind of contemporary cutting-edge work available to San Francisco art goers: they have stimulated the production of a substantial quantity of original work by queer women and transgender artists and have developed an audience of a substantial size for their work.

We have been hard at work for nearly a decade and excited to continue our programming, creativity, and activism.