For this Pride Month, Artsy tapped eight curators and tastemakers with ties to the queer community to share the artists they’re championing this month, and why. Through their eyes, we dive into the practices of more than 70 artists, who together speak to the essence of Pride and why the visibility of LGBTQ+ artists is critical not just this month, but always.
Evan Garza and Chris Bogia
Co-founders, Fire Island Artistic Residency
Evan Garza (curatorial fellow at MASS MoCA) and artist Chris Bogia highlight artists from the Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) community—the first LGBTQ+ artist residency in the world, which they co-founded in 2011—including Leilah Babirye, Travis Boyer, Chitra Ganesh, Tony Feher, Keltie Ferris, Chris E. Vargas, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Elijah Burgher, Jeffrey Gibson, and couple/artist duo Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens. To this day, the organization continues to provide a live/work-space for practicing and emerging queer artists in the historic LGBTQ+ community of Fire Island, New York.
Elijah Burgher
B. 1978, Kingston, New York. Lives and works in Berlin.
“Elijah is an incredible artist, painter, and draftsman. His work in recent years has primarily been engaged with issues related to Mother Goddess worship from Roman and Greek antiquity, blended with contemporary notions of queerness, transness, and this beautiful queer, witchy place where those elements meet. There’s a queer ritual aspect to Elijah’s work that dates back centuries, and the work cracks wide open these historical and mythological narratives.” —Garza
Léuli Eshrāghi
Curator of Indigenous Practices, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal
Léuli Eshrāghi—inspired in part by their own Indigenous Sāmoan culture, in which fa’afafine and other gender identities have existed for centuries–highlights Indigenous and queer artists whose works are all “conceptually solid and poetic, as well as materially rigorous,” including asinnajaq, Walter Kaheró:ton Scott, Yann Pocreau, Carlos Motta, Seba Calfuqueo, Tyrrell Tapaha, Sarah Sense, Tarek Lakhrissi, Osman Yousefzada, and Rosalie Favell.
Carlos Motta
B. 1978, Bogotá. Lives and works in New York.
“Carlos Motta’s deeply embodied research-based video, installation, and performance practice situates a profoundly queer intersectional critique of imperialism and binarism in relation to futurities of queer wellness and fulfillment, which we all need more of!”