Queer Women in the Arts, an 8M celebration

Presented by Art+Feminism in partnership with Wikimedia LGBT+

This Women’s History Month we organized a very special panel followed by a workshop in partnership with Wikimedia LGBT+ titled Queer Women in the Arts. With the presence of the visual artists Ad Minoliti, Ana Raylander Martis dos Anjos and María Belén from the Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina, we were able to spark a rich discussion on visibility, memory, and representation of queer women in arts and technology. 

This event was part of the Wikimedia Celebrate Women calendar and our campaign “What Would a Truly Feminist Internet Look Like?” (2025–2026). In addition, through a workshop facilitated by Vic Sfriso (Wikimedia LGBT+ and WMAR) and Freddy Veloz (Wikimedia LGBT+), we learned together how to address these issues on Wikidata, a project on which we have been focusing during the second year of this campaign to explore data structure, governance, and models.

LGBT+ women constitute a historically invisible and marginalized group that has survived and continues to survive by organizing within a community with a deep understanding of the importance of preserving collective memory and their personal histories. Therefore, nothing could be more fitting than to celebrate this month with a panel that facilitates these shared experiences.

Opening the panel, Ad Minoliti (they/them) shared their project Feminist School of Painting (2018), which sought to rethink physical educational spaces and how they were, or were not, organized to provide an environment where creativity and learning could flourish. Beyond that, the feminist school aimed to question how the methodologies and narratives of traditional art schools center the cis-male figure and his way of thinking.  

Building a bridge with more traditional institutions, Ana Raylander Martis dos Anjos (she/her) discusses the challenges she faces in her work as an artist when exploring these themes, drawing on her experience with an exhibition project at the museum in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. 

Still on the topic of memory, Maria Belén Correa (she/her), an Argentine trans activist who founded the Archivo de la Memoria Trans, shared with us her experiences, challenges, and lessons learned over nearly 15 years of work with a community that has learned to archive in order to keep the stories of trans people in Argentina alive. The archive, which today holds approximately 6,000 items dating from the early 20th century to 1990, can be consulted online. 

We left this panel with the idea that even in distinct contexts and practices, for queer women, art and technology address the urgent need to construct, preserve, and challenge narratives about their own lives and creative work. Whether by rethinking educational methodologies, challenging traditional institutions, or creating community archives as a form of resistance, all initiatives point to the centrality of memory, representation, and autonomy in the production of knowledge. 

For the Wikimedia community, the lesson is that the practice of editing also becomes a political exercise in reimagining more inclusive and sustainable structures, where these stories not only survive but are recognized in all their complexity and power.

Email us at info@artandfeminism.org to join the campaign. The internet is the battleground where our stories, histories, and futures are shaped. Either we fight for it, or we let it be shaped for us. The choice is ours. Let’s rewrite the rules together.