Queer|Art Reveals New Mentors For 2024 Queer|Art|Mentorship Program Cycle

Queer|Art, NYC's home for the creative and professional development of LGBTQ+ artists, has announced the new Mentors for the 2024 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 13th 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 national cohort of 2024 Mentors are based variously across the country. Queer|Art proudly welcomes four new Mentors to the program: interdisciplinary composer and performer M. Lamar; writer, curator, and community educator Eva Yaa Asantewaa; novelist and founder of the Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop Jackie Ess (Darryl); and transdisciplinary artist and activist Demian DinéYazhi'. We are also proud to welcome back four returning Mentors, including: author, playwright, and gender theorist Kate Bornstein (Gender Outlaw, A Queer and Pleasant Danger); artist, activist, and writer Avram Finkelstein (Gran Fury, Silence=Death Collective); filmmaker and writer Ira Sachs (The Delta, Love is Strange, Passages); and filmmaker, writer, and artist Stephen Winter (Chocolate Babies, Jason and Shirley).

Applications are open through July 30th. Learn more at www.queer-art.org/mentorship

The 2024 Queer|Art|Mentorship Mentors by Field

FILM

Ira Sachs / NY (Director, writer, filmmaker; Passages, 2023; Love is Strange, 2014; Forty Shades of Blue, 2004; Married Life, 2008; Keep the Lights On, 2012)

Stephen Winter / NY (Filmmaker, writer, artist; Chocolate Babies, 1996; Jason and Shirley, 2015; Bad Friend, 2018; The Space Within, 2023; Adventures in New America, 2018)

LITERATURE

Kate Bornstein / RI (Author, playwright, actor, gender theorist; Gender Outlaw, 1994; A Queer and Pleasant Danger, 2012; Hidden: A Gender, 1989; Hello, Cruel World, 2009)

Jackie Ess / NY (Writer, novelist, and co-founder of the Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop; We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, 2020; Darryl, 2021)

PERFORMANCE

Eva Yaa Asantewaa / NY (Writer, curator, community educator; Senior Director of Curation, Gibney Dance, 2018-2021; recipient of the Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance, 2017; founder of Black Curators in Dance and Performance)

M. Lamar / NY (Interdisciplinary performer, composer, activist; Lordship and Bondage: The Birth of the Negro Superman, The Cloisters, 2019; The Voice in Three Acts, MoMA PS1, 2015; NEGROGOTHIC, A Manifesto, The Aesthetics of M. Lamar Participant Inc., 2014)

VISUAL ART

Avram Finkelstein / NY (Artist, activist, writer; Dedications, NYC AIDS Memorial, 2023; You Care About HIV Criminalization, You Just Don't Know It Yet, VisualAIDS, 2018; founding member of Gran Fury & the Silence=Death Collective)

Demian DinéYazhi' / OR (Artist, writer, curator; A Nation is a Massacre, Pioneer Works, 2018; Between the Waters, Whitney Museum of American Art, 2018; Ancestral Memory, 2016; An Infected Sunset, 2016)

(Image credits, clockwise from top left: 1. Kate Bornstein, image by Jess Dugan; 2. Demian DinéYazhi', image courtesy of the artist; 3. Jackie Ess, image courtesy of the artist; 4. Avram Finkelstein, image by Alina Oswald; 5. Eva Yaa Asantewaa, image by D. Feller; 6. Stephen Winter, image courtesy of the artist; 7. Ira Sachs, image courtesy of the artist; 8. M. Lamar, image courtesy of the artist.)

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 thirteenth year, QAM has graduated 130 Fellows, with 76 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, 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, and Yaddo, among others.

The 2024 Queer|Art|Mentorship Program Cycle

Following a two-month application period, each Mentor will work with Queer|Art staff to select a Fellow within their respective field of creative practice. Fellows apply with a specific project they would like to work on during the program and, once accepted, meet with their Mentors monthly to discuss their progress. The 2024 cycle of the Mentorship program begins in January and ends 10 months later in October.

The timeline for Queer|Art|Mentorship is as follows:

• Applications open: May 18, 2023

• Application Deadline: July 30, 2023

• Applicants Notified: November 2023

• Program Begins: January 2024

• Program Ends: October 2024

The steady growth in volume of applications received during the first ten years of the program (numbering more than 320 last year) speaks to the important role Queer|Art|Mentorship performs within the arts community, as well as to the need of such programs in the face of an ongoing lack of traditional institutional and economic support for the creation of LGBTQ+ work. Prospective Fellows who are interested to apply should visit www.queer-art.org/mentorship for more information about the program, Mentors, and application instructions. Full bios for each Mentor are included below.