(auto)biography: the photography of Nelson Edwin Rodriguez
Curated by Ira Sachs and Boris Torres
Each month, Visual AIDS invites guest curators, drawn from both the arts and AIDS communities, to select several works from the Frank Moore Archive Project. For December / AIDS Awareness Month, Ira Sachs & Boris Torres focus on the work of Nelson Edwin Rodriguez. View WEB GALLERY here*
From the Curators' Statement:
We are struck by these pictures both for the sweetness of their imagery, and the story they begin to tell. Of Nelson Edwin Rodriguez, born in Puerto Rico in 1974, grew up in the Bronx, and died in 1996, at 22. In that short time, he starred in a movie "The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love", performed in Miami, Houston, Boston, and Manchester, UK, and made countless friends, performance videos, and photographs. His friends called him “The Counselor,” after Diana Troy, his favorite character on Star Trek. He had lovely long Barbara Streisand fingernails and he liked to dance to Bette Midler. He had incredible wit, and perfect physical timing. He loved to dress in drag, but when he went home to the Bronx, he would put on his boots and sweatshirt, and try to stay under the radar, become invisible (he learned to walk so he wouldn’t swish). (read more)
About the Curators:
Boris Torres is a painter originally from Ecuador who grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Veneklasen/Werner Gallery in Berlin, Bowman Bloom Gallery, Parlor Projects, Art in General, Center for Book Arts, LGBT Community Center, Dumbo Arts Center, Butt Magazine, and he has an upcoming exhibition in December at La Petite Mort Gallery in Ottawa, Canada. Currently finishing an MFA at Brooklyn College, he will be teaching there in the Spring.
Ira Sachs is a filmmaker whose work includes the features Married Life (2007), The Delta (1997), and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning Forty Shades of Blue (2005). He is the co-founder and curator of Queer/Art/Film, a monthly series held at the IFC Center in New York. His most recent film, Last Address, is an elegy to a group of New York City artists who died of AIDS.
image: Nelson Edwin Rodriguez, untitled (self-portrait), c. 1993-1996
About the Curators:
Boris Torres is a painter originally from Ecuador who grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Veneklasen/Werner Gallery in Berlin, Bowman Bloom Gallery, Parlor Projects, Art in General, Center for Book Arts, LGBT Community Center, Dumbo Arts Center, Butt Magazine, and he has an upcoming exhibition in December at La Petite Mort Gallery in Ottawa, Canada. Currently finishing an MFA at Brooklyn College, he will be teaching there in the Spring.
Ira Sachs is a filmmaker whose work includes the features Married Life (2007), The Delta (1997), and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning Forty Shades of Blue (2005). He is the co-founder and curator of Queer/Art/Film, a monthly series held at the IFC Center in New York. His most recent film, Last Address, is an elegy to a group of New York City artists who died of AIDS.
image: Nelson Edwin Rodriguez, untitled (self-portrait), c. 1993-1996
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