WRRQ Collective, 2013 - Present
WRRQ is an intergenerational community of queer and transgender artists and activists who wrrq to transform our culture. We make art together as a form of visual resistance and collective healing, including visual art, music, drag and video. We also take care of each other and our people by organizing community dinners, clothing swaps, vigils, street actions and movement building. We came together through an annual summer retreat, Arts in the Woods, linking queer artists with young people dealing with homelessness and transience. We have grown into a year-round family and our WRRQ continually evolves as a creative response to community needs.
Public exhibitions and events have been presented at Open Society Foundation, Magnum Foundation, Aperture, Joan Mitchell Foundation, International Center for Photography, BRIC, New York Public Library, Empirical Nonsense, The Center, Leslie Lohman Prince Street Project Space, The Bureau of General Services Queer Division, among numerous other places.
Arts in the Woods, 2013 - 2019
An annual intergenerational summer arts retreat. Many of us have been on staff since 2013. In 2015 we took leadership and planned the camp collectively, switched the structure to all work together on one collectively imagined project–a music video. Nine youth leaders from the Wrrqshop assisted in running the camp. Camp Director : Quito Ziegler. Co-Directors : Kristen Parker Lovell, Wil Fisher, Travis Laughlin, Ethan Shoshan.
Fierce and Free : original song + music video created from scratch during the retreat.
Arts in the Woods is an annual retreat at the Easton Mountain Queer Retreat Center for over 50 queer/trans visual artists, performers, dancers, musicians, makeup, and culinary artists. The program uniquely encourages collaborations between different generations of queer artists. Half of the artists are taking a break from transience or staying at homeless shelters in NYC and Boston. The other half are at different points in their journeys. Many of the returning participants are shelter alumnae who worked collectively as leaders for six months to plan the retreat at a weekly intergenerational art salon called the Werrrqshop.
Arts in the Woods grew from a desire by more established queer artists to co-create with young transient artists passing through queer youth homeless shelters. The program dismantles the hierarchies established in dominant systems of culture, nurturing a cohort of young queers to take control of their own representation. All participants agree to respect and learn from each other, as they take time away from the transphobia, police brutality, money troubles, and other pervasive social ills that plague our cities.
Partners include the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Easton Mountain Queer Retreat Center, Sylvia’s Place, New Alternatives, Harlem United, Boston GLASS, LMCC Fund for Creative Communities, Visual AIDS, the Werrrqshop, and Trans in Action.
Werrrqshop, 2014 – 2015
From October 2014 – August 2015, Ethan Shoshan and Quito Ziegler ran a weekly drop-in art-making and leadership development workshop at the Joan Mitchell Foundation Education and Research Center called the Werrrqshop. Projects included: the WHAT MATTERS zine, the 2015 Arts in the Woods summer retreat, a Community Safety Workshop with ALP, AVP, BCPC & MRNY, visibility badges for Islan Nettles court support, Visual AIDS PlaySmart packets, banners for the International Community of Women Living with HIV’s presentation at the United Nations and the Trans Day of Action, collaborations with individual artists Caitlin Rose Sweet, Rebecca Levi, and Carlo Quispe. Funding provided by Joan Mitchell Foundation Education and Research Center, LMCC Fund for Creative Communities. Generous food donations by Bottino NYC.
Family Dinners, 2013-2015
Every Thursday @ Sylvia’s Place Emergency Shelter we gathered and prepared a dinner together.
