MTV RE:DEFINE’s Edgy Fun Adds Up to a $1.6 Million Dallas Night

The MTV Staying Alive Foundation’s eighth annual RE:DEFINE art and auction gala fundraiser with its longtime partner The Goss-Michael Foundation turned into a $1.6 million night. Always one of the most exciting events of the Dallas social calendar, this year’s edition at the Statler Hotel kept the fun (and the legacy) growing.

With contemporary art as one of the cornerstone’s of MTV RE:DEFINE, which has to date raised more than $14 million in support of HIV prevention and education, it’s known to attract a crowd that is far from stuffy and who enjoy pulling edgier evening looks from their wardrobes.

With more 300 people in attendance, the 2019 event was chaired by Sami Abboud of Dallas’ Merrill Lynch and co-hosted by MTV RE:DEFINE co-founders Joyce Goss and Kenny Goss.

Marc Quinn, this year’s artist honoree, first came to prominence in the early 1990s alongside others such as Damien Hirst, Tracy Emil and Sarah Lucas (the three of them were also part of the YBAs, Young British Artists group). Perhaps the moment that firmly put him on the contemporary art world map was the presentation of his sculpture, Self, from 1991 that was made entirely from Quinn’s blood which was able to stay intact due to a refrigerated display unit keeping it frozen.

With that same concept of purity of materials in mind, Quinn is now creating, Our Blood, a piece which will open on the steps of the New York Public Library in 2021 from blood donated by more than 5,000 people – with half of those volunteers being refugees. The piece is intended to bring more awareness to the global refugee crisis.

A highlight of this year’s RE:DEFINE was the performance by Rita Ora. The international superstar also has a connection back to the art world having played a role in the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey, which was directed by one of the YBAs, Sam Taylor-Johnson.

“The funds raised at MTV RE:DEFINE 2019 will go to support the programs of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation whose mission is to ensure that young people globally are able to make informed choices about their own sexual and reproductive health. MTV Staying Alive is not only working toward an HIV-free world but is doing so by ensuring the conversation is driven by empathy, inclusion and humanity, rather than the stigma and prejudice that has been too much a part of the disease for far too long” shared Georgia Arnold, executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation.

Those who turned out to raise their paddles and hear Ora belt out “Radioactive” included Georgina Hartland, Elisabeth Karpidas, Muffin and John Lemak, Stacie McDavid, Sterling McDavid, Jessica Nowitzki, Jeremy Strick, Margretta Wikert, and Christen Wilson.