Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award 2025
Introduction
Dedicated to continuing the legacy of the late HIV/AIDS, health, racial, and social justice art activist, Mary Bowman, these $5,000 awards support those who, through their art, are working toward and committed to making a difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS and/or advancing health, racial, and social justice.
HIV/AIDS is a disease that intersects with social justice issues, such as discrimination, economic inequality, and human rights. Social justice initiatives can help fight HIV/AIDS by addressing these issues and improving access to healthcare. Therefore, this award program is not exclusive to HIV/AIDS work and activism.
Click here to meet our four (4) 2024 Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Awardees.
Each of these four (4) awardees received a $5,000 award.
We will award another four (4) $5,000 awards this year.
This award program is open to applicants who study or reside in the U.S.
Description
Please note: Recipients of the Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award will be asked to share the art that was funded by this award within one year after recipient's receipt of funds. The National AIDS Memorial will have no ownership of the art - we simply wish to share with our funding partner the inspiring work that it supported.
The Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award
To honor Mary’s legacy and support other accomplished young and emerging art activists (“artivists”) like her, the National AIDS Memorial created the Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award. Student and non-student art activists are welcome to apply for this award. These $5,000 awards are intended to support young and emerging artivists (ages 27 and younger) each year who exemplify Mary’s passion for the arts as the vehicle for their own HIV/AIDS and/or health and social justice community activism and expression.
Recipients of the Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award use their art and activism to raise greater awareness about bigotry, stigma, and social justice around the issue of HIV/AIDS and/or the persisting health and social inequities that fuel the continued spread of the disease.
About Mary Bowman
In May of 2019, the HIV/AIDS world lost its most promising poet, advocate, author, singer and young person living with AIDS, Mary Bowman. Mary was 30 years old. Born with HIV, she lived out her experiences of growing up and living with HIV (and losing a mother to AIDS) through her art. As a young, out woman of color, she was a dynamic, vital voice for the next generation of individuals living with HIV—proud, willing to speak of her own challenges with not just her own health needs (mental health, social support) —but also a fierce advocate for other young people with HIV for whom a voice was lacking. For Mary, the arts gave her the platform and voice to channel her creative energy, her passion, her truth.
In general, artivism harnesses the critical imagination to design events and strategies that provoke new questions and new meaning in pursuit of more respectful ways of being. As an example, with respect to HIV/AIDS, such artistic statements are frequently borne from a variety of perspectives in terms of gender, sexuality, age, class, ethnicity, and nationality, and wield artistic expression as a tool for combating stigma. Stigma, and all it entails—shame, isolation, embarrassment, exclusion, shunning—remains among the most formidable barriers to fighting the epidemic.
For more information about the Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award, click here.
Selection Process
In addition to the judges' understanding of - and response to - each applicant's examples of their art activism submissions, judges will be reviewing each application to confirm that the applicant has thoroughly addressed the personal statement and essay prompts, and meets the requirements, detailed in our Application Requirements.
For the Mary Bowman Arts in Activism Award Application Requirements, Click Here.
The National AIDS Memorial is the steward of our nation's two most notable AIDS Memorials: the federally-designated National AIDS Memorial Grove and the globally-recognized AIDS Memorial Quilt. Both were created by hundreds of thousands of grieving loved ones in the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic, and through their respective artful natures and unique storytelling qualities, they reveal the humanity behind the statistics, invoke compassion, and dispel discrimination, and stigma.
Imparting the history and lessons of AIDS — and the AIDS Movement — is at the core of everything we do, and through our iconic AIDS Memorials and several inspiring programs, including our youth scholarship program, we seek to ensure that the story of AIDS is known by current and future generations; that they stay engaged in the fight against HIV; be inspired to advance health, racial, and social justice efforts; and embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our vision is that never again will a community be harmed because of fear, silence, discrimination, or stigma.