Meet Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. She’s a badass artist based out of Brooklyn. She is the real-life Nola Darling.
All of the art Nola paints in Spike Lee’s Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It is her own.
Her work takes a powerful stance against racism, misogyny, misogynoir, homophobia and transphobia. Her installations take extra care to invite and include trans, non-binary and queer folk and she provides a platform for their voices to be amplified.
The posters for “Stop Telling Women to Smile” often include the faces of her subjects and a quote, rejecting sexism or racism or homophobia, or demanding action from its reader.
Her artwork uses several mediums, paint, posters, drawings, video installations… She is at times a commercial artist and at others, she is creating original works of art for their aesthetic value, rather than for a functional one.
In all honesty, Fazlalizadeh’s creativity knows no boundaries.
Her art project “Stop Telling Women to Smile” began in the fall of 2012, in Brooklyn. It tackled gender-based street harassment internationally.
The work speaks to a universal experience that despite being called out by droves of women, femmes, gender-fluid, and queer folk continues to attract bogus arguments of free speech and overall sexism.
View this post on InstagramNever took a pic of this one after putting it up last year. Glad to see it still here.
A version of this artwork is included in She’s Gotta Have It. We know it as the “My Name Isn’t” series.
The “Stop Telling Women to Smile” art project brings into full view the intersectional aspect of catcalling and general street harassment.
The installment at the Brooklyn Museum included fillable cards that asked how museum-goers’ experiences of street harassment informed their daily lives. The cards also included a section to fill out the writer’s self-identification (such as black, queer, cis, etc.)
After nearly six years of ongoing installations, the “Stop Telling Women to Smile,” continues to spread internationally. With posters and murals in Europe and the Americas.
The spread of her artworks and subsequent messages was made possible because of Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s decision to make her posters available for free downloads on her website.
This encouraged women and allies around the world to put them up in their own communities. She introduced the coordinating effort as “International Wheat Pasting Night.” And has since occurred annually.
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is also the NYC Commission On Human Rights’ Public Artist in Residence.
“I am currently the first artist in residence with the city’s Commission on Human Rights. This 18 month position will unveil series of citywide street art projects addressing anti-black racism and gender-based harassment.”
Her work has a fierce rejection of racism and the privileges of whiteness in a world where anything but is a target.
“Not Going Anywhere” was a creation in response to the 2016 presidential election. The indoor, wheat pasted installation of portraits of American artists and activists showed a distinct rejection of Trump’s very “white” America.
“Directly challenging the xenophobic and misogynistic rhetoric now dominating American discourse, subjects of this work assert that they are not going anywhere.”
“Oklahoma is Black” exhibit debuted in April and extended into late May with the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center. The exhibit showcased the richness of Black culture in OK.
Oklahoma is Black, by @fazlalizadeh !
An amazing exhibit! Thank you for showing the richness of our blackness within Oklahoma’s culture.
Thank you Councilwomen @NikkiNiceOKC and @JD__Baker for “Gallery Talk” in which they provided their insightful thoughts on the exhibit. pic.twitter.com/8Rs13XCyu7
— Jordan Broiles©️ (@blxckbird___) April 24, 2019
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s art continues to inspire and spread across the world, inspiring solidarity, action and hopefully change.