From Artforum to Them to The New York Times and more, Queer|Art is making big waves in the press! Here’s a roundup of recent press highlights.
Diversity in Action: “The Art of Community”
Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellow Justin Allen shares his work at the LGBT Center. Credit: Eric McNatt
It’s been particularly busy as of late at Queer|Art, the Manhattan-based nonprofit that serves "a diverse and vibrant community of LGBTQ+ artists across generations and disciplines." The staff had been actively preparing for an important board meeting while continuing to balance its regular full schedule at the organization, founded in 2009 by filmmaker Ira Sachs.
During a lunchtime break on a late-winter Monday, Queer|Art Programs and Operations Director Rio Sofia (she/her), a visual artist with a background in community organizing and fundraising for transgender communities and artists, explains by phone that the reason why Sachs "was motivated to start an organization like QueerArt was because there had been so much death within the queer community that generations of queer artists were sort of siloed from one another. One very important aspect of queer culture is intergenerational exchange and queer wisdom that is passed down from generation to generation, and because of the AIDS pandemic, there had been such a devastation and such an incredible amount of loss that he was realizing that there wasn't as much generational exchange as what he had grown up with."
Queer|Art has indeed become a welcome and beloved source of kinship for LGBTQ+ artists. The organization focuses equally on film, performance, visual art and literature, supporting member artists who are often interdisciplinary —visual artists who are also writers, filmmakers who are also performance artists, for example. It takes a three-pronged approach to uplifting its members, through "Practice, Presents, and Awards." Practice, centered on creative and professional development, helps artists acquire the skills and tools necessary to self- advocate and sustain and sell their work. It also stresses goal-setting, peer accountability, habit-building and community-building.
"We’re very, very big on community-building," Sofia emphasizes, later adding, "We find that, while resources can sometimes feel scarce, within community you can actually find a lot of abundance…"
Artforum: Queer|Art Announces 2023 Fellows and Mentors
2023 Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellows. Top, left to right: Miller Robinson, Miranda Haymon, Nora Sharp, Lu Yim. Bottom: Zefyr Lisowski, Demetri Burke, Kearra Amaya Gopee, Catching on Thieves.
New York–based nonprofit Queer|Art has revealed the eight fellows who will be participating in its 2023 Queer|Art|Mentorship (QAM) program, and has named the eight mentors with whom they will be working. The yearlong program, established in 2011, is aimed at breaking down the barriers of age, discipline, and geography that often divide artists, and instead fosters both remote and in-person interaction between emerging and established LGBTQ+ artists from across the United States. This year’s participants are scattered across five states: California, New York, Illinois, Georgia, and Pennsylvania…
Them: “Lilly Wachowski's Latest Project Is Mentoring Up-and-Coming Trans Filmmakers of Color”
2022 Queer|Art|Mentorship Mentor Lilly Wachowski (images courtesy of Getty Images)
Wachowski’s anti-fascist politics are evident from her body of work, though in recent years the filmmaker has been even more direct, speaking out against the GOP’s violent tendencies and auctioning off artifacts from her movies to fundraise on behalf of transgender youth. More recently, Wachowski has partnered with the non-profit QUEER|ART as one of the organization’s cadre of esteemed mentors. Describing the position as a “path toward the resistance of empire,” the filmmaker’s role comprises a year-long creative exchange with the up-and-coming filmmaker Catching On Thieves, who’s currently at work on a feature film about a suicidal therapist who hires an assassin to take their own life.
So far, the collaboration has proven valuable beyond the sharing of scripts and the discussion of genre films and camerawork. “Lilly is teaching me that it’s healthy and fruitful to work from a place of rage,” says Wachowski’s mentee. “And that there’s power in that place having humor and love — it doesn’t have to be one or the other…”
T Magazine: “Two Artists on the Sacred Sisterhood of Trans Women”
Xoài Phạm and Tourmaline photographed at Salt Studios. Credit: Cruz Valdez for T Magazine
Tourmaline: There’s this idea that it’s the older person who mentors the younger person, but I’m being mentored all the time by friends who are younger. Xoài’s unapologetic writing about sex, nightlife and friendship inspires me to turn down the voice in my head that tells me what I can or cannot embody or portray. I’m most connected to my power when I feel the lightest, plugged into all of who I am.
Xoài Phạm: As a trans woman of color born to Vietnamese refugees in Orange County, Calif., I didn’t have many elders or mentors. Growing up, I never thought I could work in the film industry as a writer or an actor. I wasn’t encouraged to dream. Through my work and the discovery of myself, I’ve given myself permission to do so.
Tourmaline and I had known each other for a while, but it wasn’t until I received the Queer|Art mentorship last year that I got to work with her closely: I was writing a screenplay that was pulling from a lineage of stories about female friendship. There are countless examples centering on four women: “The Golden Girls,” “Sex and the City,” “Waiting to Exhale.” I was coming from that perspective but highlighting the sisterhood that’s so sacred to trans women, which has rarely been seen on television — what it means to be in this messy, unhinged relationship with others who are dealing with emotional baggage and hormonal changes. Trans women hold each other accountable and lift each other up…
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Mundane: “Zackary Drucker and Miranda Haymon discuss collaborating for Queer|Art’s 2023 Mentorship Cycle”
2023 Fellow Miranda Haymon
Mundane: Tell us about your experience thus far as a Queer|Art mentee.
Miranda Haymon: My experience so far has been incredible, truly. I’ve had a lot of mentor/mentee relationships before this, but this has been the fastest and most easeful of them all. From our first phone call I immediately felt a connection, and that connection has grown deep and wide over the last several months. I love that both of us are on a sort of precipice; seeing budding flowers from seeds planted long ago. There’s a real sense of accountability in our relationship, too. I want to show up for her just as much as she’s shown up for me. She watches in process cuts of my work, and I go to her premiere parties. We are constantly celebrating each other. I am so lucky to have her support and guidance…
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