Transformer is a Washington, DC based artist-centered, non-profit visual arts organization. Founded in June 2002 by artists & arts organizers, Transformer’s mission is to connect, elevate, and serve a diversity of emerging artists and arts leaders. Transformer develops innovative, multi-faceted exhibition and program platforms, both independently and through global partnerships, to present artists’ evolving ideas and work, advance new and best visual arts practices, and engage audiences with emerging contemporary art. Transformer is committed to inclusivity, professional excellence, artist equity, open dialogue, expansive cultural exchange, and freedom of artistic expression. Artist-centered in everything it does, Transformer serves as both a catalyst and advocate for emergent expression in the visual arts. Transformer is honored to be widely recognized by artists and growing communities of supporters for advancing emerging artists and experimental artistic concepts. Sophisticated in its programming, while retaining its founding punk rock ethos, Transformer propels artists who define what’s happening now and next in contemporary visual art.
Transformer
Installation view of Very Sad Lab: The Incubator at Transformer, a living, growing site-specific installation, resource lab, and series of pre-plant-parent programs by Very Sad Lab, a houseplant rehabilitation and research-based community-engaged art project developed by DC based artists Valerie Wiseman and Naoko Wowsugi, February – March 2022, mixed media (sculpture, plants, video, sound) installation. Courtesy of Transformer.
Programming documentation of DC artist Adele Kenworthy’s Femme AAPI Fruit Cutting Circle, August 2022. Presented as part of to carry within us an orchard, a mini-installation within the 19th year of Transformer’s Exercises for Emerging Artists program focusing on Artistic Interventions. Courtesy of Transformer.
Installation view of Commemorative Strands, Transformer’s 19th Annual DC Artist Solo Exhibition, by Artise Fletcher. Commemorative Strands explored the sociological meanings and issues surrounding hair, especially in Black culture, through the presentation of large tapestries that are the artists’ reimagined versions of commemorative cloths using synthetic Kanekalon hair, along with photographs and projected video works; September / October, 2022. Courtesy of Transformer.
Exhibition view of Transformer20 retrospective title wall text featuring a 2004 drawing by DC artists Amanda Klienman of Transformer’s 1404 P St, NW storefront. Transformer20, November - December 2022. Courtesy of Transformer.
See Also
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”