A national awards program, QUEER|ART|PRIZE honors the work of LGBTQ+ artists in areas of Sustained Achievement and Recent Work, with a ceremony that celebrates the entire Queer|Art community.
2018 Queer|Art|Prize Recent Work winner Xandra Ibarra (2nd from left) with presenter Vivian Crockett (3rd from left) and Queer|Art Staff (Travis Chamberlain, KT Pe Benito, and Rio Sofia, from left to right) at the 2018 Annual Party. Image by Eric McNatt
Queer|Art|Prize presents two $10,000 awards to LGBTQ+ artists based in the United States: one for Sustained Achievement and the other for Recent Work. The award is possible through Queer|Art’s ongoing partnership with HBO and was developed in collaboration with the Queer|Art artist community. Featuring a Nominating Committee of 20 esteemed arts professionals from around the country, Queer|Art|Prize confirms the impact of Queer|Art’s programming and support on a national level and immediately establishes itself as one of the most significant awards specifically created to recognize the artistry and contributions of LGBTQ+ artists.
QUEER|ART|ANNUAL PARTY
On Thursday, October 22, a radiating crowd of more than 200 LGBTQ+ artists and allies convened virtually for our biggest event of the year: The 2020 Queer|Art Annual Party. The 2020 Queer|Art Annual Party took place on Zoom this year, featuring special performances and readings in celebration of the graduating Fellows of the 2019-2020 Queer|Art|Mentorship program cycle. The night also occasioned the official ceremony for Queer|Art|Prize, a national award program presenting two $10,000 awards to LGBTQ+ artists.
This year's Prize honored the legendary activist, performance artist, caregiver, and club organizer, Julie Tolentino and multi-disciplinary artist and DJ, Yulan Grant with awards recognizing their significant contributions to queer culture and community. The Prize awards artists in two categories: Sustained Achievement and Recent Work.
The night was also peppered with dazzling performances and readings by Joan Jett Black, Raja Feather Kelly, Sarah Sanders, Pamela Sneed, Keijaun Thomas, and Xandra Ibarra. Ms. Joan Jett Blakk, America's favorite drag queen for President, kicked off the night, opening with a few things to say about the upcoming election and her strategies for sustaining hope during unsettling times. Multimedia performance artist Keijaun Thomas performed an excerpt of 'My Last American Dollar,' a powerful work that interrogates histories of labor, subjugation, and resistance through the lens of Black trans womanhood.
Graduating QAM Fellows Raja Feather Kelly and Sarah Sanders both shared new work: Kelly read his 2020 poem, All I Really Need To Know I Learned from Marsha P. Johnson, a heartfelt text honoring the legacy of the legendary activist. Sanders enraptured the audience with an original song that reflected on Shabbat, rest, and ritual, recorded from her bedroom in Brooklyn. Multi-year QAM Mentor Pamela Sneed read from her new memoir, Funeral Diva, a testimony of Sneed's coming-of-age in the AIDS era, and its effects on life and art.
From left to right: Raja Feather Kelly, Pamela Sneed, Sarah Sanders, Xandra Ibarra (aka La Chica Boom), and Keijaun Thomas.
2020 SUSTAINED ACHIEVEMENT WINNER:
JULIE TOLENTINO
Julie Tolentino, THE SKY REMAINS THE SAME: Tolentino Archives Ron Athey’s Self Obliteration # 1, 2006 - Ongoing
In the area of Sustained Achievement, the award was granted to Julie Tolentino. Judges in this category remarked on Tolentino's decades-long commitment to her interdisciplinary performance installation practice and its intimate relationship to her underrecognized work as a caregiver, club organizer, and activist. In particular, as club and live performance spaces cannot exist right now within the current pandemic, it’s important to honor the work that queer people of color have done in this area historically. Tolentino's Clit Club, a queer nightclub with a twelve-year legacy, holds a unique place in nightlife history for its policy of racial and gender inclusivity among women, lesbians, gender-nonconforming people, and trans femmes that was far ahead of its time.
Adjudicators were further moved by Tolentino's ongoing project of archiving performances in collaboration with other artists “to endow works into and onto” her body. This work moves closely with the invited artists to understand how to best think about and care for their work and its relationship to their lived experiences. These space-making practices are offered as forms of touch to ensure that queer performance and art-making endures, queerly. As we consider the present & future of performance, Julie Tolentino's work signals hope and possibility for a future of live art anchored in care, community, resilience, and bold visionary thinking that inspires us to imagine new ways of being present in the world together.
“It is a challenge to capture Filipina-Salvadorean artist Julie Tolentino’s still-unfolding body of work in words,” writes a member of the Queer|Art|Prize Nominating Committee. “This challenge arises because Tolentino’s three decades of art praxis continues to do the queer work of undoing the sexual, gender, and racial systems of representation and social power that restrain the perception, value, and interaction of different bodies. Tolentino’s extensive body of work has not only participated in creating queer culture and history. It has also contributed to the enduring internal multiplicity of queerness—a queerness that has remained attuned to the different gradients of power, vulnerability, and possibility that shape the relationships between bodies. Although Tolentino’s work continues to make a monumental impact on queer life, I believe that it rarely receives the attention and recognition that it deserves.”
READ MY LIPS, Julie Tolentino & Lola Flash, designed by Gran Fury, published by ACT UP, 1989
CLIT CLUB, 1996 Flyer. Queer nightclub founded by Julie Tolentino and Jaguar Mary. Hosted by a dedicated staff with Tolentino 1990 - 2002. Image courtesy of Clit Club Archives.
Images courtesy of Commonweath and Council, Visual AIDS, Performance Space New York.
"I’m just beyond words," Tolentino remarked while accepting the award, "I have tried to practice and prepare for this, but I just want to say that, first, I feel like I’m home. I feel home in this organization and this award coming from Queer|Art, a revered organization close to my heart. Queer|Art’s insistence with this intergenerational exchange as a moving and firing archive—changes all of us and year by year, person by person, this is always happening. All of the things like Clit Club, it belongs to all of us. It belongs to us who are too soft, who don’t know how to touch right, or try to find different forms of vulnerability, different kinds of humor, working out our anger, our disappointments, and to allow ourselves to just be bodies of difference. What I want to say is that you tattoo me, you move me, you turn me on, some of you sleep with me, change me, teach me, walk, and march, and charge me. And some of you write to me! Which has helped me feel that I could, in turn, start to write and maybe write to you."
2020 RECENT WORK WINNER:
YULAN GRANT
In the area of Recent Work, the award was granted to Yulan Grant for BUSS DEMON CHOAT (2019), a site-specific performance installation incorporating the sounds of dancers performing on a floor equipped with microphones, archival sound, and a live set improvised by the artist. The work investigates non-linear notions of time in the diaspora, where everything is happening simultaneously or in cycles of repetition. BUSS DEMON CHOAT explores themes of cultural anxiety and societal distrust and takes inspiration from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s remark, “I fear I may have integrated my people into a burning house.”
Judges in this category remarked that through an ethereal, immersive, and highly-choreographed sonic performance, BUSS DEMON CHOAT presents a subtle power to the viewers in the audience where you know what is happening, but it’s not blatant.
Yulan Grant is a New York based multi-disciplinary artist from Kingston, Jamaica. As a creative positioned between Caribbean and American culture, their work interrogates ideas of identity, notions of power, perceived histories and the entanglements that happen within these topics. Grant is interested in the role that new media plays in artistic practices and the dialogue they hope to create. Grant's recent exhibitions include Paradise Garage, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Bowerbird, Edel Assanti, Whitney Museum and GAMeC among others.
Grant was present over Zoom to receive the award, with their sister and girlfriend at each side."Oh my god, thank you so much. I’m tearing up, I wasn’t expecting that—I have tissues right here. Ok, I would like to thank everyone involved in this project, to Nic Kay my wonderful choreographer; to dancers Destiny Brundridge and Aarron Ricks; Kip Davis, for his amazing influence and inspiration helping me do stage design and lighting design; to the entire production team, thank you guys so much. And to my wonderful girlfriend for being so supportive, to my lovely sister for always being there for me, yeah, I’m taken aback, thank you guys so so much.”
A scene from Yulan Grant's BUSS DEMON CHOAT
BUSS DEMON CHOAT, photo by Christopher Garcia Valle
Yulan Grant is a New York based multi-disciplinary artist from Kingston, Jamaica. As a creative positioned between Caribbean and American culture, their work interrogates ideas of identity, notions of power, perceived histories and the entanglements that happen within these topics. Grant is interested in the role that new media plays in artistic practices and the dialogue they hope to create. Grant's recent exhibitions include Paradise Garage, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Bowerbird, Edel Assanti, Whitney Museum and GAMeC among others.
2020 RECENT WORK FINALISTS
The Finalists for the Recent Work award, honoring specific projects, included Randy Ford for Queen Street (2019), a full-length evening dance show filtered through the lens of queer, trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people of color; Yulan Grant for Buss Demon Choat (2019), a site-specific performance installation investigating non-linear notions of time in the diaspora and themes of cultural anxiety; Cyrée Jarelle Johnson for Slingshot (2019), his debut collection of poetry exploring the consequences of black sexual & gender deviance and the emotional burden of marginalization; and Brandon Taylor for Real Life (2020), a coming-of-age novel centered on a gay, Black doctoral student as he navigates long-hidden currents of hostility and desire.
At the Annual Party, an excerpt of a prerecorded conversation between the finalists discussing their work and celebrating one another's achievements was a beautiful highlight of an evening centered on community and care.
Queen Street (2019)
by Randy Ford
SLINGSHOT (2019)
by Cyrée Jarelle Johnson
BUSS DEMON CHOAT (2019)
by Yulan Grant
Real Life (2020)
by Brandon Taylor
2020 ADJUDICATION PANEL
SUSTAINED ACHIEVEMENT ADJUDICATORS
Kya Azeen, born and raised in the Bronx, New York, began her dance training at Harlem School of the Arts at the age of eight. With a strong focus, Kya continued her studies attending schools such as Dance Theatre of Harlem and Joffrey Ballet School. Furthering her training, she has attended Complexions Summer Intensive and became an active student of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre Fellowship Program. During her studies she trained in Graham technique, Horton, Limón and West African. Becoming an alumni of the Professional Performing Arts High School, she began competing in the New York Underground Ballroom Scene; where she learned the technique of Vogue Art and achieved multiple grand prizes and recognition at mainstream events such as the Annual Heritage Ball (2017.) Her participation within the Underground Ballroom Scene lead to many opportunities. Kya has performed at Pat Mcgrath New York Fashion Week Mothership Ball as well as becoming a featured character in Ryan Murphy’s FX series ‘Pose’ as Ms.Cherry. In 2019 she got signed to Bloc NYC talent agency which lead to her being featured in Coach ’Fifty Years Proud’ campaign, performing on ‘The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert’ and various other productions.
jayy dodd... aka [redacted] aka Lady Tournament beamed down in Los Angeles ’92 & is now based in Portland,OR. Her professional literary career includes positions at The Offing, Winter Tangerine & more with features in Poetry Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Willamette Weekly, The New York Public Library & several anthologies. She’s the author of Mannish Tongues (Platypus Press 2017) & The Black Condition ft. Narcissus (Nightboat 2019). Her film & performance work has been installed & screened across the country from classrooms to museums. She has been a Lambda Literary Fellow & Precipice Art Grant Recipient through Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art. She is the mother of Tournament Haus, a boutique Ballroom house in Portland’s Kiki Scene, where she manages & produces young Black queer & trans artists. Find her talking slick or in another dimension.
Jeannine Tang Jeannine Tang is an art historian who writes about contemporary art, queer and trans visual culture, curatorial and exhibition history. She teaches at The New School as Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Studies, and has published widely in such venues as Artforum, Art Journal, GLQ, journal of visual culture, and Theory, Culture & Society, in addition to numerous exhibition catalogues and anthologies, including Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (New Museum and MIT Press, 2017)
Recent work adjudicators
Mary Edwards is a composer and sound designer who uses immersive sound as an environmental or architectural elements with the objective to enhance the listener’s spatial experience. Themes of temporality, impermanence, nostalgia, Mid-Century Modernism and the natural world are interspersed throughout her work. Edwards’ recent and forthcoming recordings and installations include Natural Anthem; Endeavour: A Space Trilogy for the NASA Expedition of Dr. Mae C. Jemison; The Wa(l)king Pattern; Gospel Number Eight: Tributary; When the Ocean Meets the Sky and Everyday Until Tomorrow, an homage to JFK Airport and the opulence of early air travel. She has been commissioned by The Provincetown Museum, The Grimshaw-Gudewicz Gallery, Indivisible Gallery, 429 Architectural Spaces and The William T. Davis Conservancy. She lives in New York and works internationally.
Shala Miller, also known as Freddie June when she sings, was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio by two southerners named Al and Ruby. At around the age of 10 or 11, Miller discovered quietude, the kind you’re sort of pushed into, and then was fooled into thinking that this is where she should stay put. Since then, Miller has been trying to find her way out, and find her way into an understanding of herself and her history, using photography, video, writing and singing as an aid in this process. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied photography, film, video and writing. Currently, she is an MFA candidate at Bard College in their film & video department.
Joshua Sanchez's debut feature film FOUR won the Best Performance Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Best Feature Film Award at the Urbanworld Film Festival, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He was awarded the 2016-2017 Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts Artists' Fellowship in Playwriting/Screenwriting. He's a member of the Writers Guild of America, East and teaches screenwriting at SSHH... in New York City. He's contributed to The Guardian, The Creative Independent, and Lambda Literary.
2020 NOMINATING COMMITTEE
Nominations for each award were made by a diverse committee of 17 esteemed arts professionals from around the country, including archivists, art historians, critics, curators, choreographers, cultural organizers, visual artists, performing artists, teaching artists, scholars, writers, directors, and filmmakers with various intersecting commitments to queer culture.
QUEER|ART|PRIZE ARCHIVE
2019
2018
2017