Each cycle of Queer|Art|Mentorship culminates in an annual showcase of work produced by current Fellows.
"THE QAM ANNUAL" includes screenings, readings, performances, and a gallery exhibition.
This project is supported by a generous gift from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Queer|Art|Mentorship 2018-2019
Annual Exhibition
"How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care"
November 1–January 9, 2020
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center
208 W 13 Street
Nancy Brooks Brody and Russell Perkins, A Different Light, Proposal for the Courtyard of the LGBT Community Center, NYC, 2019 guache on inket print
Queer|Art is pleased to announce the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual Exhibition, which opened on November 1 in conjunction with the 2019 Queer|Art|Prize, and continues through January 9 at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center in the West Village (208 W 13th St). The two-month exhibition includes multiple components in a variety of gallery-based and time-based art formats, including a special presentation of the 2019 Queer|Art Community Portrait Project, featuring more than 40 newly commissioned portraits of Queer|Art’s diverse and vibrant intergenerational artist community by photographer Lola Flash.
The centerpiece of the Annual is a dedicated gallery exhibition, entitled “How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care” curated by current Fellow Jeanne Vaccaro. Housed within The Center’s resident bookstore, The Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, this special exhibition will present new work by the graduating Fellows of the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship program, Queer|Art’s celebrated year-long intergenerational creative and professional development program, now entering its ninth year.
The exhibition includes new works of film, literature, performance, and visual art by J. Bouey, Candystore, Daniel Chew, Xandra Clark, Sarah Creagen, Cristóbal Guerra, Russell Perkins, Ripley Soprano, and Natalie Tsui. Many of the artworks on view will be shown as fragments of larger bodies of work or works still in process, offering glimpses of each artist’s broader practice in ongoing formation.
A central theme of the exhibition targets the process of cultivating intimate and collective forms of access. In Vaccaro’s words, this has meant “building trust by being honest about what we need to make art and be together, what we can and can’t tolerate, what holds us back, and what can propel us forward. It is about the work it takes to manage togetherness across difference and through desire. It is about making transparent the everyday and historical as sites of possibility and reinvention, and it is about needing each other—all of us—to do the work of transforming our aesthetic and political worlds.” The Annual will be accompanied by a publication, designed by Jade Marks, edited by Jeanne Vaccaro, and produced by Queer|Art.
A series of special programs of time-based art events, organized with the graduating Fellows, will take place as part of the Annual throughout its two-month run—including screenings, performances, artist talks, and more—all listed below.
THE ANNUAL PARTY
The 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual opened with The Annual Party on Friday, November 1, hosted by theater artists Mashuq Mushtaq Deen and Xandra Clark, who have worked closely together throughout the past year as Mentor and Fellow. The evening also included the awards announcements for the 2019 Queer|Art|Prize, now entering its third year with support from HBO. Queer|Art|Prize annually awards two artists, selected through a national nominating process, with $10,000 prizes (one for Sustained Achievement and the other for Recent Work). The night concluded with a dance party as DJ SANDY bringing the epic night of queer revelry and celebration to a close.
EVENTS
The events below were part of the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual, curated by current Fellow Jeanne Vaccaro and titled “How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care.” The exhibition presented, across multiple formats and locations (including The LGBT Community Center, Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, Movement Research and La MaMa E.T.C.), new work by the graduating Fellows of the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship program: J. Bouey, Candystore, Daniel Chew, Xandra Clark, Sarah Creagen, Cristóbal Guerra, Russell Perkins, Ripley Soprano and Natalie Tsui.
Russell Perkins & Nancy Brooks Brody: A Different Light
Tuesday, November 5, 2019 @ 7PM
Bureau of General Services – Queer Division
A conversation with Current Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellow Russell Perkins and his Mentor Nancy Brooks Brody (Fierce Pussy), along with curator Jeanne Vaccaro and archivist for The Center, Caitlin McCarthy.
Cristóbal Guerra, Ripley Soprano and Candystore: How We Need
Thursday, November 7, 2019 @ 7PM
Bureau of General Services – Queer Division
Readings and performances by Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellows Cristóbal Guerra, Ripley Soprano and Candystore will activate works on display in the Bureau.
Xandra Nur Clark: Poly Sessions
Saturday, November 9 & 16, 2019 @ 10-4PM
The LGBT Community Center
As part of development for a play and web series about nonmonogamy called Polylogues, writer/performer and Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellow Xandra Nur Clark is inviting nonmonogamous couples, triads, quads, etc. to sign up to have a recorded conversation with her.
Daniel Chew and Natalie Tsui: Reverse Selfie
Friday, November 22, 2019 @ 7PM
The LGBT Community Center (Rm. 301)
A screening of new works by Queer|Art|Mentorship Film Fellows Daniel Chew and Natalie Tsui. Followed by a short discussion with filmmaker Laura Parnes after the screening.
Xandra Nur Clark: Everything You’re Told (reading)
Thursday, December 12, 2019 @ 7PM
LaMaMa E.T.C. Studio (47 Great Jones St.)
Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellow Xandra Nur Clark shares a reading of a new work, Everything You’re Told, directed by Lauren Zeftel, co-presented with La MaMa E.T.C.
J. Bouey: Chiron in Leo (excerpt)
Saturday, December 14, 2019 @ 7PM
Movement Research 9th Street Studio at CC122
Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellow, J. Bouey, will present an excerpt of a new work entitled Chiron in Leo in collaboration with DJ TearDrop. The performance will be followed by discussion and Q+A with J. Bouey and their Mentor, David Thomson.
Closing Reception: Queer|Art Karaoke Party
Thursday, January 9, 2020 @ 6PM
Bureau of General Services - Queer Division
To close out the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual, we invite you to join us for Queer|Art’s first-ever karaoke “recoupment” party, hosted by Candystore and Ripley Soprano.
2018-2019 QAM ARTISTS
2018-2019 Fellows and Mentors
- J. Bouey - David Thomson
(Performance) - Candystore - C. Finley
(Visual Art) - Daniel Chew - Frédéric Tcheng
(Film) - Xandra Clark - Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
(Performance) - Sarah Mihara Creagen - Neil Goldberg
(Visual Art)
- Cristóbal Guerra - Charles Rice-González
(Performance) - Russell Perkins - Nancy Brooks Brody
(Visual Art) - Ripley Soprano - Che Gossett
(Literature) - Natalie Tsui - Elisabeth Subrin
(Film) - Jeanne Vaccaro - Nelson Santos
(Curatorial Practice)
Other Featured Artists
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen (Host) is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and a 2019 Lambda Literary Award Winner. His full-length plays include Flood, The Betterment Society, The Shaking Earth, Draw the Circle (productions: PlayMakers Rep, Mosaic Theatre, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre; published: Dramatists Play Service), and Tank & Horse (world premiere at the Berkshire Fringe Festival). Deen’s work has been supported by a number of institutions including Sundance Institute/Ucross, Blue Mountain Center, The Public Theater, NYTW, MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Target Margin Theatre, Keen Company, New Harmony Project, Phoenix Theatre, Chesley/Bumbalo Foundation, Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, InterAct Theatre, Page73, Ma-Yi, and others. He is a member of the NYTW Usual Suspects, Ma-Yi Writers Lab, founding member of the Public Theater Alumni Writers Group, and the Dramatists Guild. He is represented by the Gurman Agency.
Lola Flash (2019 Queer|Art Community Portrait Project, Commissioned Artist) uses photography to challenge stereotypes and offer new ways of seeing that transcend and interrogate gender, sexual, and racial norms. Flash works primarily in portraiture with a 4x5 film camera, engaging those who are often deemed invisible. In 2008, she was a resident at Light Work and in 2015, she participated at Alice Yard, in Trinidad. Flash has work included in important public collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Brooklyn Museum. Her work is also featured in the publication Posing Beauty, edited by Deb Willis, currently on exhibit across the US. In 2016, she co-led a talk at the Bronx Museum with Sur Rodney Sur. They spoke to the glaring lack of women artists and artists of color, with respect to the Art AIDS America exhibition. Pen + Brush Gallery’s inaugural exhibition in 2018 featured a 30 year retrospective of her significant photographs.
2019 COMMUNITY PORTRAIT PROJECT
The 2019 Queer|Art Community Portrait Project, exhibited throughout the second and third floors of The Center’s hallways, marks the third annual edition of newly commissioned portraits spotlighting Queer|Art’s diverse and vibrant intergenerational community of over 150 artists.This year’s commission was given to photographer and incoming Queer|Art|Mentorship Mentor Lola Flash, whose heroic portraits capture the power and resilience of artists and icons within queer community, transcending and interrogating gender, sexual, and racial norms. For the 2019 Queer|Art Community Portrait Project, Flash will produce over 40 full-color portraits of artists from different generations of the Queer|Art|Mentorship program—Fellows and Mentors alike—shot on location at the historic Christopher St. Pier.
Learn more about the Community Portrait Project here
Learn more about Lola Flash here
2018-2019 Annual Exhibition Gallery
ANNUAL ARCHIVES
2017-2018 ANNUAL EXHIBITION
2016-2017 ANNUAL EXHIBITION
ABOUT OUR PARTNER
This Exhibition was produced in partnership with The Center, made possible by a grant from the Kors Le Pere Foundation. The Center has been a home and resource hub for the LGBTQ+ community, NYC residents, and visitors since their founding in 1983. The Center provides a place to connect and engage, find camaraderie and support, and celebrate the vibrancy and growth of the LGBTQ+ community.
Learn more about The Center here