Queer|Art, NYC's home for the creative and professional development of LGBTQ+ artists, is pleased to announce the new Fellows for the 2023 Queer|Art|Mentorship (QAM) program cycle. The Mentorship program is the cornerstone of Queer|Art's work, providing a platform of support for LGBTQ+ artists focused on creative issues and long-term sustainability of artistic practice. Now in its 12th year, the organization's celebrated year-long creative and professional development program supports both remote and in-person participation between early-career and established LGBTQ+ artists from across the country. In doing so, Queer|Art|Mentorship bridges professional and social thresholds that often isolate artists by generation, discipline, and region. The 2023 cohort is made up of Mentors and Fellows participating across five states: California, New York, Illinois, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
The eight Fellows accepted for the 2023 Queer|Art|Mentorship program cycle, and the Mentors with whom they will be working are:
Demetri Burke with Mentor, Camilo Godoy (Visual Art)
Kearra Amaya Gopee with Mentor, Constantina Zavitsanos (Visual Art)
Miranda Haymon with Mentor, Zackary Drucker (Film)
Zefyr Lisowski with Mentor, T. Fleischmann (Literature)
Miller Robinson with Mentor, Jeffrey Gibson (Visual Art)
Nora Sharp with Mentor, Will Davis (Performance)
Catching On Thieves with Mentor, Lilly Wachowski (Film)
Lu Yim with Mentor, Julie Tolentino (Performance)
For the last decade, Queer|Art|Mentorship has nurtured the creative and professional development of over 179 artists and propelled the careers of a new generation of creators. Alumni of the program include: Raja Feather Kelly, Ryan J. Haddad, Saeed Jones, Jeanne Vaccaro, Geo Wyeth, April Freely, Tourmaline, Sasha Wortzel, Jess Barbagallo, Morgan Bassichis, Camillo Godoy, Monstah Black, Yve Laris Cohen, Troy Michie, Angelo Madsen Minax, Tommy Pico, Justin Sayre, Eva Reign, Jacolby Satterwhite, Guadalupe Rosales, and Hugh Ryan, among many others.
Details about the projects each Fellow will be working on are provided below.
About the 2023 Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellows and Their Projects
Visual Art
Demetri Burke (he/him) is an emerging artist residing in Atlanta, GA. Through the use of painting and installation, he will be working with Mentor Camilo Godoy to connect the past with the present; and the myth-making of childhood with the realities of adulthood in hopes of capturing the mundane and the spectacular through a Black southern lens.
Kearra Amaya Gopee (they/them) is an anti-disciplinary artist working across video, sculpture, sound, and writing, paired with Mentor Constantina Zavitsanos. They will be developing original sin, a bio-mythographic, multi-channel video work that ruminates on Caribbean judicial hauntologies made flesh via their relationship with their paternal family, ancestral sin, and the circumstances of their own birth in Miami, FL in the 1990s.
Miller Robinson (they/them, it/itself) is a trans, 2Spirit artist of mixed Karuk, Yurok, and European descent, focusing on themes of transfiguration, storytelling, care, and the passage of non-linear timelines. With Mentor Jeffrey Gibson, they will be working on a creation story of self that takes the form of a suit transformed through fire and a performance-based video bridging synaptic learning mechanisms with healing relations to land and language.
Literature
Zefyr Lisowski (she/they) is a trans disabled poet and multidisciplinary artist exploring sex, griefwork, and the complexity of queer love under various systems of oppression. They will be working with Mentor T. Fleischmann to develop Ghostdaughter, a book of hybrid poem-essays about inherited grief, familial violence, and the artist's late sister.
Performance
Nora Sharp (they/them) is a creator, performer, and filmmaker who uses world-building narrative, interpersonal curiosity, and movement improvisation to draw attention to queer and trans people's unfolding relationships with themselves and each other. With Mentor Will Davis, they will be working on a DIY reality TV show about dancemaking and a solo performance that channels imagined extraterrestrial understandings of queerness.
Lu Yim (they/them) is a choreographer, teacher, and poet whose work is influenced by community care practices. They will work with Mentor Julie Tolentino on a performance made to uplift the meaning of care work and reveal complex bodily experiences associated with healing, through embodiment practices.
Film
Miranda Haymon (they/she) is a Princess Grace Award winning writer, director, and curator currently developing several projects in theater, opera, podcasts, and film. They will work with Mentor Zackary Drucker on Queer Sibs, a documentary and performance project developed out of the artist's relationship with their older gay brother, investigating how social allyship intersects with family bonds.
Catching On Thieves (she/her) is a multimedia artist who creates to both understand what is to be & to stay alive. With Mentor Lilly Wachowski, she will be working on a Kafka-esque feature film called Convenient Lies about a suicidal therapist, as well as a comic about West Philly's LGBTQIA+ scene.
For more information about Queer|Art|Mentorship and our new cohort of Fellows and Mentors, visit our website at: www.queer-art.org/mentorship.
About Queer|Art|Mentorship
Queer|Art|Mentorship (QAM) was launched in 2011 to establish an intergenerational and interdisciplinary network of support and shared knowledge for LGBTQ+ artists. Now entering its twelfth year, QAM has graduated 122 Fellows, with 71 Mentors, producing a diverse and vibrant community of filmmakers, authors, performers, visual artists, and curators. The program's enduring success is in the many creative and professional relationships it has nurtured, which continue to propel the careers of a new generation of artists.
Every Fall, QAM welcomes 8-12 new Fellows in Film, Literature, Performance, and Visual Art. Throughout their year together, Fellows work closely with their Mentors and cohort to develop new creative projects and advance their professional development.
Artists supported through QAM have gone on to present their work at such prestigious venues as The Whitney Museum, New Museum, Queens Museum, Bronx Museum of Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Venice Biennale, Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art - San Diego, Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, BAM Cinematheque, The Public Theater, The Kitchen, Performance Space New York (PS122), Abrons Arts Center, Danspace, and White Columns, and have received residencies and fellowships from Jerome Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Guggenheim Foundation, and Yaddo, among others.
The work of New York QAM Fellows and Mentors is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the New York City Council.
QAM Work-in-Progress presentations are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Lead support for Queer|Art|Mentorship is provided by Blundstone, HBO Max, Society 6, and the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Robert Giard Foundation, 1st Dibs, Company Gallery, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Marta Heflin Foundation, Pond5, the Cowles Charitable Trust, the Claire and Theodore Morse Foundation, and the Webster.
About Queer|Art
Queer|Art connects and empowers LGBTQ+ artists across generations and creative disciplines. Founded in 2009, we are an artist-led and community-centered organization—united by shared values of collective care, creative resilience, and the preservation and advancement of queer legacies and queer futures.
The devastating loss of a generation of artists to the ongoing AIDS pandemic has created a profound longing for cross-generational connections, mentorship, and community. Queer|Art serves as a ballast against this loss, seeking to highlight and address a continuing fundamental lack of both economic and institutional support for our community.
Ongoing programmatic initiatives include: our annual cornerstone program, the year-long Queer|Art|Mentorship; our long-running Queer|Art|Film series, sponsored by HBO at the IFC Center; and a wide array of awards, grants, and offerings that provide direct support to LGBTQ+ artists.
