By Matice Moore, QAM Program Facilitator
Mentorship has been a core component of Queer|Art since the program launched in 2011. This past summer, I had the honor of joining the 8th cycle of Mentors and Fellows when Kris Grey, the first ever QAM program facilitator, was recruited by Pennsylvania State University to be a visiting artist and assistant teaching professor. I began my new role by interviewing all the current Mentors and Fellows as a way to get a better understanding of the program. During those conversations, what stood out to me was the frequency with which people mentioned how impactful it was to be part of the QAM community, both personally and professionally. One Fellow responded that they felt like the other artists were “contemporaries rather than competitors,” and that they’d tried out and were now actively using a whole new medium after engaging with the other QAM Fellows. Another Fellow described how working with their Mentor helped them prioritize art-making when they otherwise would have focused on the work that covers rent and survival. What I heard were the less obvious indicators of a successful program for emerging artists, and the momentum that trust, generosity of spirit, and authentic relationships lend to one’s creative growth.
The 2018-2019 QAM Fellows were an outstanding group of artists and we’re grateful for the time and dedication both the Mentors and Fellows put into making this year extraordinary. Below is just a brief list of some of their many accomplishments.
FALL 2018
Xandra Nur Clark’s Polylogues, a theatrical investigation into nonmonogomy through the words of real people where Clark is less an actor and more a medium, is performed in full by The Tank.
J. Bouey's work, i am so tired... is performed by Bouey at BAX for 2018 Fall Space Grant Showcase. In this new process, the artist explored how improvised movement and sound production can help us access states of vulnerability that will support our healing processes of confronting issues of loneliness, the absence of intimacy, and numbing.
Xandra Nur Clark performs an excerpt of Polylogues at Bizarre Bushwick for Undiscovered Countries in September 2017.
J. Bouey performs, “Chiron in Leo,” an on-going project.
SPRING 2019
Cristobal Guerra’s short film Para Gregorio is screened as part of BAM's Caribbean Film Series: A 5th Anniversary Festival. The short documentary centers on Gregorio Guerra, who migrated from Puerto Rico to New York in 1964, offering a glimpse of his current life in Queens.
Candystore presents I Want to be the Girl with the Most Cake, an interactive and performative take on the bardic tradition of storytelling as part of the culmination of the 2018 Shandaken: Governor's Island Residency. I Want to be the Girl with the Most Cake ravels together a haphazard and intimate story of sexual miscalculations, near-death experiences, self-discovery, and getting lost.
Sarah Mihara Creagan presents a solo show at Hercules entitled Bawdy Talk. The work centers on personal narrative, reflective of Creagen's background in comics/zine diaries, as filtered through her identity as a queer, cis-woman with mixed-race Japanese heritage.
Cristobal Guerra, Para Gregorio, digital video, 2016.
Sarah Mihara Creagen, Kiss the Chef , 51 x 64 inches, watercolor on paper, 2019.
SUMMER 2019
Jeanne Vaccaro co-curates a two-location exhibition entitled Y'all Better Quiet Down with QAM Mentor Nelson Santos at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art and the LGBT Center’s Bureau of General Services–Queer Division. The show takes its title from a 1973 speech made by trans activist Sylvia Rivera at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in Washington Square Park. Amidst a chorus of boos, she implores her “gay brothers and gay sisters” to understand gay liberation as an intersectional struggle for racial justice, gender self-determination, prison abolition, and housing, employment, and economic equality.
Daniel Chew presents two new films with artist Micaela Durand as part of The Shed's Open Call, First and Negative Two. First follows a teenage girl through a single day as she negotiates physical and digital interactions with friends and strangers. Negative Two centers on a young gay man who begins an intimate texting exchange with a stranger he may never meet. In depicting young people as they navigate their daily lives and online relationships, both films investigate the nature of desire and the tensions that arise in attempting to connect with others.
Ripley Soprano hosts a chapbook release party and reading with Mask Magazine at 444 Club for their new work Premises.
“Y’all Better Quiet Down” is curated by Nelson Santos and Jeanne Vaccaro.
Daniel Chew, Micaela Durand, First, digital video, 2019.
Ripley Soprano photographed by Lia Clay for the 2018 Community Portrait Project.
FALL 2019
Russell Perkins presents his film installation in a two-person show called Ordinary Time at OCD Chinatown.
Natalie Tsui was recognized as a finalist for the 2019 Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant for if I could turn back time, a hybrid documentary examining the contortions of memory and personal testimony of a filmmaker as she enlists friends and actors to recreate a two-hour audio recording of a fight between her then-lover and herself.
Russell Perkins photographed by Lola Flash for the 2019 Community Portrait Project.
Natalie Tsui photographed by Lola Flash for the 2019 Community Portrait Project.
See more of the graduating Fellows’ work at the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual Exhibition, now on view through January 9 at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center in the West Village (208 W 13th St). The exhibition, entitled “How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care,” was curated by Fellow Jeanne Vaccaro, and is a culmination of all the Fellows’ projects created over the past year. The exhibit also spans multiple formats and locations, including the LGBT Community Center, the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, Movement Research, and La MaMa E.T.C.