Installation: Agosto Machado & Devin Antheus
June 5—11, 2024
Gallery:
About the Installation:
On June 5, Long-Term Survivors HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, floral stylist Devin Antheus invited Agosto Machado to collaborate on an installation at the New York City AIDS Memorial. This installation, which took over the Memorial's central fountain, was created in honor of the start of New York's LGBTQ+ Pride Month and the over 110,000 New Yorkers lost to the AIDS epidemic, including many creative forces, many of whom were close friends of Machado. Within the installation of calla lilies and delphiniums, Machado placed photographs of these friends, many of whom remain cultural figureheads today, including Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger, and Cookie Mueller.
About the Artists:
Devin Antheus is a floral stylist who works alongside many of the most brilliant floral minds in the Bay Area and New York City to design and execute flowers for weddings and special events. His affinity for all things wild is reflected in every arrangement. Devin’s work has been published in Vogue twice, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, The Cut, The Advocate, The Guardian, Out, Gayletter #16, WUSSY, Bust, The New Inquiry, and Co-Star Astrology Society. He is an editor-at-large for Contagion Press. Along with Harry James Hanson, he co-authored Legends of Drag (Cernunnos, 2022), a photo book and archive of living drag history.
Agosto Machado is a Chinese-Spanish-Filipino-American performance artist, activist, archivist, and Zelig-like figure who witnessed the rise of the underground theater and film movements, the 1960s counterculture, and punk rock and who has been a vital participant and witness to queer life in New York since the early sixties and the dawn of the gay liberation movement. He was part of the cohort of queer revolutionary activists, including his friends Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, with whom he participated in the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and the first gay pride march (Gay Liberation March) in 1970. Over six decades, Machado has performed at countless theaters, galleries, clubs, lofts, and underground venues including WPA, La MaMa ETC, Anderson Theater, Theater of the Lost Continent, Theatre for the New City at Westbeth, Batianos Theatre, Theatre Genesis, Judson Memorial Church, The Night House Theater, Truck and Warehouse Theatre, P.S. 122, Performing Garage, Dixon Place, 8 BC, Gene Frankel Theatre, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Club 57, The Mudd Club, S.N.A.F.U., The Pyramid, P.P.O.W. Gallery, Howl Gallery, and Participant Inc., among others.
Support:
Flowers for the installation were generously provided by UrbanStems.
Photography: Digital images by Alexander Sargent; film images by Deb Leal