Forget the icy silence and the swishing of paddles, this auction runs on high-flash performance, camp, and the annals of queer history. For the second year in a row, queer organizations Doll Invasion and Queer|Art are teaming up to host their most revelrous fundraiser yet, trading stuffy auction etiquette for queerdom and Chappell Roan memorabilia. Everything’s on the table: from Chelsea Manning’s prison zine to an original script of Bodies Bodies Bodies.
Founded in response to a call for trans community-building in the Pines, Doll Invasion combines mutual aid with rapturous partying. Queer|Art, a nonprofit that supports artists and cultivates a sense of creative mentorship in the queer community. Together, they’ve developed a fledgling event that, even after one year, is already packed with inside jokes, community lore, and cultural totems donated by stars across music, art, film, and TV.
Last year’s sales cleared $120,000 for trans artists and the ongoing services and initiatives of Queer|Art. This year, the two organizations hope to trounce that threshold, as they prepare for a jam-packed weekend of Doll Invasion programming between Aug. 28-30. For CULTURED, 15 contributors to this year’s initiative reflect on what the auction means to them, as well as the piece of personal history they’re contributing to the cause.
Chelsea Manning, political activist and DJ
“This magazine was written about my release and it was sent to me while I was still in prison. But by the time it arrived at the facility I was being held in, I was already out, so it was forwarded to my home address in Maryland. I think it’s cute! And I think it’s powerful! And I think it’s relevant! This magazine, Black and Pink, is an independent paper that distributes free newspapers to prisoners. That they documented this important moment in my life, then physically sent it to where I was being held.”
Lena Waithe, actor and producer
“The script I decided to donate is so significant to me. It is the first iteration of my debut play, Trinity. The signed photo is from my Essence magazine cover shot by Lelanie Foster, which is the last photo I took alongside the cast of The Chi. That photo is also hanging in my home, honoring the eight seasons I worked on the show.”
Molly Crabapple, artist and author
“I drew Gina Klepfisz, a Bundist resistance member in the Warsaw ghetto who pulled Jews off box cars bound for Treblinka. She was also a glamorous, ideal butch, and the aunt of my friend, pioneering lesbian poet Irena Klepfisz.”
Sasha Colby, drag performer
“For this year’s Queer|Art x Doll Invasion auction, I donated the hook from the costume I wore when I first entered the Werk Room on my winning season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. At a time when queer art and expression are being challenged in so many ways, it feels more important than ever to preserve our history and support the people shaping our future. I’m proud to give a piece of my story to something that puts resources directly back into our community.”
Young Joon Kwak, artist and musician
“My piece is a sculptural self-portrait—a cast of the hollow impression of my face, which is no longer there. One side is metallic, the other is like an unearthed fossil—at once ancient and futuristic. For me, it’s about queerness and transness: our bodies are never fixed, and what you see is never the whole story. We’re always becoming something else.”
Avram Finkelstein, artist and AIDS activist
“The Frankenstein story is based on the myth of the golem. In Jewish Hermetic mysticism, the golem is a being formed from clay and animated to provide protection. But when the golem misinterprets its directive, it can morph into an avenger. So the golem is a metaphor for both weakness and power. Since my disobedient body is increasingly beyond my control, I wanted to depict this form of uncertainty, to perform disability. The neon that fades in and out is based on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. It’s seen through a scrim, the screen-printed rendering of my neuromuscular disease.”
Pamela Sneed, multi-disciplinary artist and activist
“Well, we all know watermelon has both positive and negative connotations in the Black community and ironically is a powerful symbol of Palestinian resistance. A few years ago, I started collecting found air fresheners from my neighborhood, particularly in Black or Brown areas. I wondered about the significance of air freshener scents called Black Ice and watermelon-shaped tree fresheners. As an artist, I am bringing to light the embedded messaging that can appear innocent but is subtly loaded. In this piece, I repurpose the freshener for my own purposes!”
Chani Nicholas, astrologer and founder, CHANI
“Queer|Art x Doll Invasion are an oasis of art and culture creation at a time when so many of our institutions and safe havens are being systematically defunded and criminalized. Fascists are also so boring, so we must do all we can to fight the horrors of bad taste.”
Geena Rocero, model, writer, and director
“I’m so honored to have become the first trans Asian Playmate in 2019, becoming the first Trans Playmate of the Year in 2020, and to celebrate and immortalize it on this iconic Playboy poster is beyond!
For me, this auction, Doll Invasion, and the work of Queer|Art matters because we get to showcase how we all support one another, and that’s the most important thing. I mean, if you bid, you get to be a part of this history… bid away, baby!”
Willie Norris, designer, Willie Norris Workshop
“Willie Norris has always been a ‘jeans and a T-shirt’ kinda girl. I fell in love with Aariana the second I first saw her pictures in 2018… she gave a glare that touched my soul… and I knew she had to be in my first runway show. The clothes I presented in that collection were quite ordinary. I was, and often still am, going for a quotidian glamour type beat, but the pulsing energy that Aariana brought to the room as she closed the show was anything but.
The Queer|Art x Doll Invasion auction is an annual tradition that I think will be around for a very long time. It is a truly genius curatorial and commercial machine for both exhibiting art and personal artifacts from queer artists and makers, and turning it into material funds that Queer|Art uses to help sustain the next season of queer art and design.”
Barbara Smith, political activist
“I thought of the idea of starting the pamphlet series when I was getting ready to go to a large Black women’s conference in Baltimore in 1984, and had to collate and staple by hand a couple of hundred copies of the Combahee River Collective Statement to take with me. I thought, Why am I doing this when I’m a publisher? We should publish the Collective Statement as a separate pamphlet, and I’ll never have to do this again!
Publishing the statement in pamphlet form meant that many more people would have access to it, both because it was less expensive than our books and because it didn’t require a long time commitment to read. This was before the age of personal computers made all kinds of printed material widely available. We published six pamphlets in all. Each of them was sold with a wearable button with slogans like ‘Black Feminism Lives,’ ‘No to Apartheid No to Racism,’ and ‘No to Homophobia.’ Solidarity is critical right now. I’m honored to contribute to a trans woman-led art initiative. Decades ago, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was similarly committed to making visible the creativity of those the society wanted to erase.”
Myha’la, actor
“I am so thrilled and honored to be included in this year’s Doll Invasion x Queer|Art Auction! I thought it was only appropriate to donate a piece of memorabilia from the film that started my three-film run as a hardcore lesbian. The greatest art, in my opinion, has come from the soul of a queer person. I am so lucky to have been able to work with some of the best, and I look forward to making more work that centers my queer family, because no one does it like us.”
Jennie Livingston, director
“I donated a Miramax release poster for Paris Is Burning. The history of queer people is one in which we make our work against all odds, and we never know if there will be an audience. I don’t think we thought anybody would see the film, much less that there’d be a distribution company, much less that there’d be, like, a poster with a colorful shoot of the cast.
It’s interesting to revisit that time, and to be able to contribute to an auction that benefits organizations like these. As someone who was part of Queer|Art from its very first year, back when it was a baby organization, it’s such a pleasure to watch it flourish, grow, change, and adapt to the time, and I hope the auction raises a lot of cash to help the next generation of queer artists to come.”
Katie Gavin, musician, MUNA
“The mission of intergenerational support in the Queer Art community is close to my heart because of all the times I have been blessed to receive wisdom and guidance in my craft from my queer elders. When MUNA struggled, getting encouragement from people like Tegan and Sara and Emily Saliers and Amy Ray from the Indigo Girls really made all the difference for us to keep going. I am looking forward to hearing some young, brilliant queer artists’ work and exploring it together!”
Tiffany Cabán, New York City Councillor for District 22
“I’m really nerdy, so I want to tell you not about my favorite book, but about the acknowledgment section of my favorite book. Cantoras, by nonbinary Uruguayan author Caro de Robertis, is a novel about a group of queer women in Uruguay living under a dictatorship and carving out friendship and love and safety together.
In Caro’s acknowledgment, they say, ‘It’s a reminder that there are millions of people whose names we don’t know who did fucking courageous things.’ Caro says, ‘They are unrecorded, but I am here today and able to speak because of them.’ Ain’t that the truth! It is certainly true for me. Our trans beloveds are on the front lines of all liberation fights—not just their own. They are courageous every minute of every day. Fuck being an ally; we must be co-conspirators. That means supporting our trans family with everything we’ve got—our dollars, our bodies, our love and commitment, day in and day out.”
Fran Tirado, Doll Invasion Founder and Queer|Art Board Member
“Everyone wants to be part of something created by ‘the Dolls.’ The power of trans cultural production and the experiences we create has been a drawing force for eons, and this exhibition is a tranifestation of that. The question is, who’s going to outbid me for that Geena Rocero pinup?”
The 2o26 Queer|Art x Doll Invasion can be accessed for bidding here, and will be open through August 30.
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