We meet five emerging LGBTQ artists as they prepare for a month-long residency on New York’s iconic Fire Island.
Each summer on Fire Island, a tiny community off the coast of New York situated just below Long Island, five LGBTQ artists are invited by Chris Bogia and Evan Garza, the co-founders of Fire Island Artist Residency, to spend a month living and working together. For four weeks, their home is Cherry Grove, an idyllic, remote area of the island only accessible by boat, where artist Chris Bogia tells me “it is roughly a city block length walk from the bath to the ocean”.
Fire Island is the oldest gay town in the country, Bogia explains when I ask him why he chose the location. For decades, it has been historical site for queer art making, housing writers such as Tennessee Williams and Frank O’Hara and artists including Robert Mapplethorpe and Paul Cadmus.
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From the 420 artists that applied for residency in the FIAR house this August, Chris Bogia, Evan Garza, art experts and FIAR alumni and staff chose Paolo Arao, Edie Fake, Wilder Alison, Jesse Harrod and Derrick D’Von Woods-Morrow. During their time on Fire Island, the five artists will be visited by lecturers Tom Burr, Angela Dufresne, Jeffrey Gibson and Eileen Myles, and take part in a special collaboration with Visual AIDS featuring Tom Bianci. i-D meets the five artists as they prepare to begin their residency on the iconic Fire Island to talk about work, sex and what it means to identify as queer in 2016.
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