Urvashi Vaid, an outspoken immigrant, lesbian and woman of color was an LGBTQ+ superhero who believed in human rights for all people and helped shape the modern day gay rights movement.

An activist drag queen in rural Alabama is forced to keep her identity secret as she fights for human rights in a race against the systematic erasure of her own history.

London, 1966. Homosexuality between men is still criminalised. Women don't fare any better. A woman who is exposed as a lesbian can expect to lose her job, her lodgings, her family. It is a tough, dangerous and nerve-wracking existence.

Placing Black queer experience at the heart of a highly collaborative process we will create richly layered portraits of contemporary figures (rendered in photography, oral testimony, performance and sound) out of a process of engagement with historic portraiture held in UK heritage collections.