Hi! I’m Masina, an artist, activator, and community organizer based in Philly. I’m raising funds to bring SOUL STAKE: Degenerate Art Show to life.
Soul Stake is a new exhibition and wearable sculpture activation that reconstructs and confronts the Nazi’s 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition. This project reclaims a term once used to silence artists and resurrects this exhibition to find empowerment through collective memory, resistance, and creative freedom.
I’ve been producing, curating, and organizing community-driven art events in Philly for 9 years, mostly funded out of pocket or through ticket sales. I have applied to a few grants, but in the interim, I’m asking for support so I can commit to a venue and begin building out the space. Your support will help offset the burden of these expenses. My work is ambitious, and if you’ve ever attended an event I’ve organized, you know I’m here to lay it all out. I’m interested in creating temporary alternative worlds of intimate exchange, unusual connection, and that favor those who cultivate their own curiosity. Your support will help make this work more accessible, fulfill the cost of the vision, and give me the momentum to begin.
The funds will go directly toward a short-term space rental, building out the exhibition over three months, and if there's anything left to covering artist fees, and materials.
The open call is live now. I’m collecting wearable sculpture and 2D works including painting, drawing, photography, print, and mixed media. The exhibition opens in March 2026, with the wearable sculpture runway on March 20th, the Spring Equinox.
The original exhibition of degenerate art featured hundreds of works confiscated by the Nazis and displayed clumsily in an attempt to instill fear of diversion, experimentation, and difference in the general public. This fear of challenge, which the Nazis so boldly exhibited, is what highlights the importance of diversion, resistance and artistic independence.
This project is important because it activates collective memory, and memory as resistance. Degenerate art was also considered “un-German” art in the 1920s, and was defined as work that opposed senseless war, exposed the horror of the battlefield, satirized the Weimar Republic, and professed an honest hope for change. As Die Brücke attempted to manifest, it aimed to gain the future by owning the past. These efforts were thwarted, and the artists who survived were marred by the condemnation of their intellectual property.
The Trump administration follows the authoritarian leadership of the last century closely. It’s always time to remember, to engage, and to reclaim voice. This project confronts one of history’s most violent assaults on artistic freedom while speaking to the resurgence of censorship and authoritarianism today. Reimagining this exhibition is my way of transforming generational trauma, both historical and personal, into collective expression and resistance.
I have never received grant funding, and I often take losses on the work I produce, but I believe deeply in my responsibility to live up to my vision and to engage those who listen. Any amount truly helps lighten the load and makes this exhibition possible.
If my work has ever inspired you, moved you, or made you feel connected, I invite you to support this project in whatever way you can. I will bring this show to life no matter what, but your support means a lot.
Thank you!
<3 Masina