Queer|Art announces winner of The Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers

Queer|Art, New York City’s home for the creative and professional development of LGBTQ+ artists, in partnership, is pleased to announce the winner of The Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers, Chen Xiangyun.

This year’s awarded projects celebrate the richness of intimacy within queer communities. 

Chen Xiangyun will receive a $10,000 cash grant to support the development of her body of work which documents first and second-generation QTPOC immigrants across the United States. The work renders images of queer intimacy and vulnerability, especially among people of color, through authentic visual representations of their worlds. While photographing, the artist interviewed each sitter and asked about how their cultural backgrounds informed their experiences of being queer in America. Xiangyun’s ongoing series depicts people of diverse ethnicities, queer identities and regions, charting the emotional intricacies of queer life.

On receiving the 2022 Robert Giard Grant, Xiangyun writes, “I’m very honored to receive the Robert Giard Grant and I can’t wait to begin traveling the country to meet and photograph more queer people of color. It is my goal to increase queer visibility, portray the richness and complexity of our emotional experience, and reach more diverse ethnicities. As a Chinese lesbian immigrant and emerging photographic storyteller, this grant is an exciting opportunity for me to realize my ideas and grow my LGBTQ+ and art communities. I am very grateful for this award.”

Chen Xiangyun is a Chinese lesbian photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her art practice employs bookmaking, analog film and photographs. Her work is rooted from her sexuality and Chinese upbringing. Chen has shown her work both nationally and internationally, including the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, Baxter Street Camera Club of New York, Anthology Film Archives as well as Experimental Film Fest. About her series, Chen Xiangyun writes: 

“This work is about centering images of queer intimacy and vulnerability, especially queer POC, through authentic visual representations of our worlds. […] I am making pictures that I wish I could have seen. Ever since I was a kid, I had dreamt about being told that it was possible to be gay and live an honest life. Looking back at the discrimination, shame, and guilt that I experienced, I want my pictures to say this to queer people who might be looking for courage like I was.”

Runner up Camilo Godoy will receive a $5,000 cash grant to support his long-term project AMIGXS, a series of assertive photographs of friends and lovers engaged in acts of love and lust. The project is inspired by 20th century queer photography and publishing legacies sustained by erotic publications like Physique Pictorial and Sierra Domino. Through AMIGXS, Godoy manipulates scale to toy with the boundaries between the private and the public – presentations of each photograph range from zine to billboard. Ultimately, the photographs in AMIGXS celebrate friendship and insist on love as a way of life to imagine subversive ways of being. Hi

On being named runner-up for the 2022 Robert Giard Grant, Godoy writes, “Support for queer artists is fundamental to resist the ongoing catastrophic and conservative moment impacting us. Receiving this funding from the Robert Giard Foundation is an affirmation of my work. It is also a celebration of my relationship, and the people in my photographs, to the wonderful queer legacy of Robert Giard and of the many artists he photographed.”

Organized in partnership with The Robert Giard Foundation and Queer|Art, The Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers supports and promotes self-taught, early career or otherwise emerging LGBTQ+ artists, awarded on a yearly basis. This support is vital for emerging artists, who may lack the financial resources or institutional support available to more established artists. 215 applications were received for this award cycle.

Visit: www.queer-art.org | Twitter: @queerartnyc | Instagram: @queerart | Facebook: @queerartnyc