Paul Mpagi Sepuya

“The truth of the matter is that there is no one way to tackle queerness, and there is no one way to tackle queer art making,” Evan Garza, co-director of the Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR), told me during my visit to the residency last week. Now in its third year, FIAR is the only artist residency in the country dedicated exclusively to queer, emerging artists. FIAR co-director Chris Bogia followed Garza’s sentiment, stating, “I always know that there is going to be some nugget of queerness in anything the residents do. The fun thing is seeing how it operates differently.”