VAVA VOOM Honoring Lambent Foundation, Antonio Sergio Bessa, Carlos Gutierrez-Solana

Recognizing 35 Years of Visual AIDS

Visual AIDS marked 35 years of programming with a special VAVA VOOM 2023, honoring our long-standing social justice funders at Lambent Foundation; curator emeritus of the Bronx Museum, Antonio Sergio Bessa; and Visual AIDS Artist Member and Board Member Carlos Gutierrez-Solana.

VAVA 2023 was held at Houston Hall on May 15. The evening was hosted by Linda Simpson with special live performances by Charles Busch, Amber Martin, and West Dakota!

The VAVA 2023 honorees:

Lambent Foundation

Presented by Kiko Soirée

Antonio Sergio Bessa

Presented by Carey Lovelace

Carlos Gutierrez-Solana

Presented by Linda Earle and Tom Rhoads

Thank you to our incredible VAVA VOOM 2023 Supporters!

SPONSORS

Lambent Foundation

Marta Heflin Foundation

Nancy and John Solana Advised Fund at The Dallas Foundation

in honor of Carlos Gutierrez-Solana

CO-CHAIRS

Dr. Daniel S. Berger

Manuela Donoso

Jim Hodges

Carlos Marques Da Cruz

Michael Paley & Noel Kirnon

P·P·O·W

GOLD PATRON

Agnes Gund

SILVER PATRON

Gilead Pharmaceuticals

PATRONS

Alexander Gray Associates

Regina Asborno & Benjamin Shepherd

Yona Backer

Estrellita Brodsky

Dan George

Gail Goldberg

Gordon Robichaux

Steven Johnson & Walter Sudol

Glenn Ligon

Marques McClary & Giuseppe Lignano

Michael Marks

Patrick Owens & Gary Martin

Resorts World Gives

Yvonne Force Villareal

Lauren Wittels

FRIENDS

Esha Ahmed, Makrosha

Isaac Alpert

Nayland Blake

The Bronx Museum of the Arts

Jean Carlomusto

Mary Ellen Carroll

Linda Earle & Joe Sullivan

Teresa Ferrando Kleint

Allen Frame

Howard & Michele Harris

Patrick and Kelly Hilden

Michael Hoeh & John McGovern

James Jaxxa

Floyd Lattin & Ward Mintz

Jeffrey Lee

Cary Leibowitz & Simon Lince

Scott Lorinsky

Candice Madey

Stefani Mar & Barry Frier, Baobab Frames

Lucas Michael

Jennifer Morton

Kazem Naderi

Basit Qayyum

Jody Quon

Doreen Remen

Fernando Santangelo

Nelson Santos

Steve Shane

Eric Shiner

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Lowery Sims

Sur Rodney (Sur)

Muna Tseng

Junnko Tozaki

Dana & Ken Triwush

Bill Van Parys & Doug Harris

Marguerite Van Cook

Heinrich Von Kesseler

YOUNG PATRONS COMMITTEE

Isaac Alpert

Eden Deering

Sydney Fishman

Tony Jackson

Hollie Pollak

RAFFLE DONORS

Acne Studios, l.a. Eyeworks,

Todd Snyder, Cary Leibowitz,

Lucas Michael, Scooter LaForge

SPECIAL THANK YOU TO

Artspace; Felipe Baeza; Luther Davis, Powerhouse Arts; Stephen Gemberling; Gai Ghererdi; Phillip Gutman; Teresa Ferrando Kleint; Emperor Vanity Society and The Imperial Court of New York; Cary Leibowitz; Tito’s Vodka; Brent Zerger; and all of our amazing volunteers and donors.

Lambent Foundation is Visual AIDS single largest funder and has been our long-time partner, helping to make our work possible since 2010. Lambent works at the intersection of art, culture, and social justice. Through their grantmaking, they explore how contemporary art and aesthetics serve as a strategy for promoting thriving cultural practices in Nairobi, New Orleans, and New York City. Lambent works to transform philanthropic practice by promoting a culture of reciprocity, joint commitment, and mutual accountability among funders and grantee-partners. Lambent advances equity within the world of contemporary art — from major museums to artist collectives. Lambent values artists, creative practice, and cultural practitioners as crucial contributors to movements for social change and justice. Learn more.

Antonio Sergio Bessa is chief curator emeritus at the Bronx Museum, which he joined in 2003. A scholar of concrete poetry, he has organized several exhibitions on themes related to text-based art, and his essays on concrete poetry have been widely published in anthologies, journals, and websites. He is the author of Öyvind Fahlström: The Art of Writing (2008), and editor of Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos (2007), in collaboration with Odile Cisneros), and Mary Ellen Solt: Toward a Theory of Concrete Poetry, (2010). Bessa organized several exhibitions at the Bronx Museum including Joan Semmel: A Lucid Eye (2013), Paulo Bruscky: Art is our Last Hope (2013), Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (2015, in collaboration with Yasmin Ramirez), Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect (2017, in collaboration with Jessamyn Fiore), The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop (2019), and Darrel Ellis: Regeneration (2022, in collaboration with Leslie Cozzi). As an educator, he worked as a contractual instructor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from 1998 through 2004; led a seminar on artists' writings at the School of Visual Arts (2001-2004); taught Museum Education Issues at Columbia University’s Teachers College from 2006 to 2016; and was a visiting faculty member for the Bennington College Museum Fellows Term Program for Spring 2022.

Carlos Gutierrez-Solana is an artist, curator, arts administrator, museum professional, birdhouse maker, and gay man. He has been a Visual AIDS artist member since 2000 and board member since 2017. As an artist he has exhibited his work and site-specific installations and presented his performances throughout the country since 1972. Originally trained as a figurative/representational painter most of the work has focused primarily – though not exclusively, on the body, specifically the male body, gender, sexuality, space manipulation, mark-making, and AIDS. He has worked, and continues to work, with a variety of materials formats and genres including (but not necessarily restricted to): painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, theater, dance, glass, collage, text, and computer imaging, and now birdhouses.

As a curator he has developed numerous exhibitions and events in a wide range of subjects and media (including hooked rugs; ceramics; architecture; fashion, drawing, installation, photography, painting, sculpture, and AIDS) on both coasts and throughout New York State, but he is probably best known as “that guy who did a miniature golf course created by artists for Artists Space.” Exhibits he has created have been presented at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; The Queens Museum, NY; The Newark Museum, NJ; The Munson Williams Proctor Institute, Utica, NY; Jamestown Community College, NY; Lake George Arts Project, NY; and Artists Space and the New York Transit Museum, both in NY, among others.

As an arts administrator and museum professional he has been an exhibit designer/fabricator for the Staten Island Children’s Museum; curator for the Queens Museum; director of the Visual Artists Program for the New York State Council on the Arts – for 10 years; artistic and executive director of Artists Space, and deputy director for the New York Transit Museum. He’s also lectured extensively on a variety of subjects, participated in numerous workshops with both school-age children and adults, and served on many art panels throughout the country.

As a gay man he’s been out since 1970 and was diagnosed HIV+ in 1989. He has been asymptomatic with an undetectable viral load for many years. He is single and leading a happy, productive life.

Hosted by

LINDA SIMPSON Since the late 1980s, Linda Simpson has been a multi-faceted drag queen as a nightlife promoter, journalist, playwright, actress, game-show hostess and publisher of the underground gay magazine My Comrade. Her photos of NYC’s drag scene in the 1980s and ‘90s are featured in her book The Drag Explosion, which is also title of her touring slideshow.

Performing live:

CHARLES BUSCH is the author and star of such plays as The Divine Sister, Vampire Lesbians
of Sodom, and The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, which ran for nearly two years on Broadway and received a Tony nomination for Best Play. He wrote and starred in the film versions of his plays, Psycho Beach Party and Die Mommie Die, the latter of which won him the Best Performance Award at the Sundance Film Festival. He is a two-time Manhattan Cabaret Award winner, a Bistro Award honoree and has performed his cabaret act in many cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Paris and New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series. More here.

AMBER MARTIN is an internationally acclaimed vocalist and comedic cabaret star based in NYC. She draws inspiration from the traditions of Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, Bette Midler, and Dolly Parton. Her Drammy Award-winning shows have been described as "watching Ruth Draper after she's come back from an acid trip during which she thought she was Janis Joplin." The New Yorker has named her one of the top performers of the year.

Onstage, Amber is a powerful vocalist with a deep love for all genres of classic American pop music, which also inspires her own original songs. She combines uplifting cabaret, power vocals, comedy, and true stories in her live, raw, genre-hopping musical performances. This casts light on her uniqueness from her contemporaries and brings a diverse range of inclusive, button-pushing entertainment to her equally diverse audiences. Amber's recent collaborations include Broadway's Tales of the City, where she belted the backing vocals on The Scissor Sisters' single "Inevitable" from their album Magic Hour (Sony Music), as well as the hit single "Too Much Music" on Jake Shears' forthcoming album, Last Man Dancing (Mute Records).

She guest-starred in John Cameron Mitchell's sold-out Origin of Love Tour in Australia (including Sydney Opera House), S. Korea, Mexico, on Broadway, and all over the US. Amber and John are currently touring their own co-written live variety show, Cassette Roulette, which opened with hugely successful runs at MASS MoCA, BRIC/Celebrate Brooklyn, and Joe's Pub NYC. She is also the featured special guest in Jake Shears' UK album release tour, where she will sing her new single "Devil Came Down The Dance Floor," co-written with Jake Shears and featuring Amber on the Last Man Dancing record.

Amber continues to evolve as a writer, curator, and star of her own shows, such as her acclaimed international performance series Bathhouse Bette: A Musical Celebration of Early Bette Midler (Adelaide Cabaret Fest, Joe's Pub NYC, Rude Mechs Austin, Oasis SF, Atlantis Cruises), Amber Alert! (Wild Project NYC, Joe's Pub NYC, Allways Cabaret NOLA), and Janis: Undead (Joe's Pub, Adelaide Cabaret Fest, Southeast Texas Music Hall of Fame). Her shows have included luminary guest stars such as Karen Black, John Cameron Mitchell, Jake Shears, Justin Vivian Bond, Cole Escola, Joyce Dewitt, and Bridget Everett.

Amber is currently recording her own forthcoming original solo Country album, Second Heart, which features songs written by herself and her friends, Rufus Wainwright, John Cameron Mitchell, Jake Shears, Brett Every, among others.

WEST DAKOTA (they/them) is a mixed-Filipinx drag artist based in Brooklyn, NY. In 2019, West was named Drag Queen of the Year at the Brooklyn Nightlife Awards. They are one of the organizers of the Brooklyn Liberation march, which has been described as the largest action for Black Trans lives in history. For this, West was a recipient of the Stonewall Vision Award in 2020, and named an inaugural Logo Legend. They have performed globally with institutions such as MoMA PS1, Creative Time, and the Brooklyn Museum. Their work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue Magazine, and The Cut.