Feature Friday w/ Michael Grace DeCristo
How is your work informed by your identities?
My art has always served as an extension of myself, my life. Growing up queer in a conservative space, photography gave me a means of expressing the embodiment femininity from a safe distance. A lot of my earlier works saw me displacing my femininity outside of myself onto my female subjects, letting my feminine side live safely in pixels and silver.
After moving to New York at seventeen I eased into my safer surroundings, and my work began to shift. My medium changed from digital to film photography as my life’s focus shifted from survival to what I can/will leave behind as an artist, what experiences I will be able to say I had a hand in creating. Being exposed to fellow queer people for the first time drove me to photograph them, to create memory and legacy with them.
My artwork informs my identity as much as my identity informs my artwork. I often times find myself reflecting on my life and photographs through writing, uncovering the layers of my queer perspective and experience I would have otherwise ignored or forgotten. I often think about my power as a trans person to create my own image of myself and reality, and how that parallels my portrait work.
What art helped you come to accept your own LGBTQ+ identities? Which LGBTQ+ artists inspire you and your work?
Nan Goldin’s work and the honesty it conveys has always been inspiring to me. Although a large breadth of my work is tableau, her work reminds me to keep a level of authenticity in everything I create.
Please speak to the importance of being proud, and what Pride month means to you…
Pride in yourself and identity is a tool for survival, a means of radical self love that pushes boundaries for representation and respect as a community. It is something that transcends a single month of the year to me- it's more than rainbows and parades. Pride is showing and standing up for yourself and your peers. Pride is educating yourself on other perspectives and experiences within the community, learning how you can help uplift one another. Pride is unconditional love and celebration for your full authentic self.