Ang R. Bennett is our 2025 Pride Artist

Each year, we commission an LGBTQ+ Nebraskan artist to create a design for us to share at Pride events around the state. We're thrilled to share our artwork for 2025 from artist Ang R. Bennett. Ang's painting, titled "Gravity," is a beautiful new addition to our ongoing Pride series. You’ll find it for free at Pride events around the state through June.

From Ang:

This year’s ACLU Pride theme, “Freedom to Be,” resonated with me—not just as an artist, but as a Black transmasculine person living in the Midwest, where the right to simply exist often feels like a radical act. At a time when lawmakers are pushing harmful policies that threaten the lives and identities of LGBTQ2IA+ people—especially trans youth—I wanted to create a visual reminder of what holds us together: community. This piece, titled "Gravity," depicts two brown fists meeting at the center of the composition, pointing to a circular ripple of swirling colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. The hands are coming out of a background of a textured blue, evoking the sky. "Gravity" is a symbol that our power, our joy, and our freedom are always in our hands, even when the world tries to take them away. It reminds us that we are not alone—that our stories are woven together, orbiting a shared purpose. That we exist, exactly as we are meant to, to help keep the world moving in synchrony.

Ang is an Omaha-based interdisciplinary artist, curator, actor, athlete, certified doula, and queer activist whose work examines the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality. With a practice rooted in both introspection and research, Ang's art explores identity through personal narrative and collective history. Notably, their work is featured in the Stonewall National Monument Visitor's Center, the first LGBTQ2IA+ center within the National Park System.

2024: Freedom, Natori Pittman

2023: Pride is Still Protest, Joy Cotton

2022: Reflecting, Michael Elizabeth Johnson

2021: Resilient Together, Tiana Conyers