SUPPORTING FREEDOM
Our Mission
Using art as a catalyst, our objective is to intersect art and activism to fund anti-trafficking organizations fueling conscious-raising actions and innovative, effective solutions. The promotion of personal transformation, resilience, community solutions, and agency are core values in our mission.
Our vision is to use artistic collaborations and actions to spread the message that we all have a responsibility to build a world where human beings do not own human beings and to end trafficking. To achieve our mission, we have garnered a team of revolutionary activist artists and influencers, and partnered with the largest and most established programs working to end global human trafficking, namely Voices4Freedom, Apne Aap, and Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW).
All profits from proceeds will directly support survivors and benefit these anti-trafficking organizations and their efforts.
Naima Penniman, Climbing PoeTree
Layla does not shy away from taking on the heaviest topics or the darkest corners of our society. Art is our weapon, our medicine, our voice, and our vision. The metamorphic process of the butterfly is what Layla creates as she travels the world to bring awareness and light.
Layla Love, Founder
Our vision is to use artistic collaborations and actions to spread the message that we all have a responsibility to build a world where human beings do not own human beings and to end trafficking.
Laila Ali
My family knows all about fighting, and so I support the impact that Layla Love’s work is having in fighting sex trafficking.
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Katie Couric
This is something that everyone needs to jump on board and support. Together we can bring information that will help eradicate human trafficking.
"My whole point is to shock people into action and then to have a means of action available to them, Love says of her work, most recently aimed at ending human trafficking. A series of new shows and images compel viewer confrontations with stark slavery and desecration alongside elevated visions of liberated woman-defined sexuality. Any resulting dissonance among viewers is answered with a means to resolution as well, and it is here that Love’s work surpasses former explorations of horror. Rise of the Butterfly, a non-profit dedicated to combating human trafficking and to supporting its survivors, will benefit from the photography, as will any who see it and who contribute by purchasing works or a Rise of the Butterfly book. Founded by Love with feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Rise of the Butterfly empowers viewers beyond simply discomforting them even as the work empowers its subjects by bringing their suffering out of shadows. From the gallery walls, the viewer is given the honor and the means to bring the work outside again, back into the world transformed into change, and that makes the show satisfying as well as provocative."​
Layla Love
Layla Love is also currently working on a fine art book, Women of Resilience & Purpose. Within the book, personal stories of the most resilient women in today's world and extraordinary portraits of them taken by Love will be shown to the reader. Women of Resilience & Purpose will be a raw yet inspiring collection of photo essays by award-winning art photographer Layla Love. It will include a foreword by Gloria Steinem and an introduction by Anthony Haden-Guest. Production will be managed by Love's agent, three-time Grammy-winning Waterside productions. All net proceeds from Women of Resilience & Purpose will be donated to Rise of the Butterfly.
Love has launched a brand new limited-edition clothing line that will confront and censure the inherent human-trafficking practices within mainstream clothing manufacturing. Ethically produced with the most sustainable materials possible, this wearable art collection is designed to help individuals literally embody the change necessary for a world without human trafficking.
All of the clothes are derived from original art photography by Layla Love. From the ink that uniquely imbues the fabric to the fair shipping practices that get these garments to your doorstep, Layla Love Art clothing proudly upholds principles that always place humans before profits. There’s a myriad of looks for everyone’s personal style.
"Rise of the Butterfly brings us art and purpose.
What can be
better than that?"
Gloria Steinem
Mentor
