Red Rae (they/them) is a multimedia artist and performer living in Baltimore, MD. They imbue their projects with playful sincerity while examining ideas of perception and transformation, often through the lens of trans futurity. Red has performed all over the country and has been awarded numerous grants and residencies. They were recently an artist in residence at both the MacDowell Colony and Mass MoCA, they are the recipient of the 2024 Rubys Grant, and were a 2023 Sondheim Prize semifinalist. Red holds an MFA from Towson University and a BA from Bard College. @red.rae.red
How has your background in New Mexico contributed to your artistic identity? I grew up in Albuquerque, NM, where I developed my love of live performance and a close-knit arts community. Growing up in New Mexico shaped my relationship with nature and taught me about its queer, sexy, and violent rhythms. Albuquerque also taught me about people and the incredible complexity they can hold.
When did you first fall in love with art and realize you wanted to be an artist? For you, what is the importance of the arts? I fell in love with art in high school when I had knee surgery and couldn’t walk for months on end. I drew and painted the entire time and discovered the grounding and healing outlet creativity can provide.
What does your typical day in the studio look like? Walk us through your studio and your most used materials and tools. I just moved studios and am so excited to see how being in a much larger space allows me to work. My most used tools are my overhead projector, my sewing machine, my typewriter, and my body. I have a physical practice that I do in my studio every time I am there, which grounds me in my performance practice, in my body, and in the space.
What projects are you at work on at the moment? And what themes or ideas are currently driving your work?: I am obsessed with portals right now. I have been deep in collaborative processes with other artists, painting portals in their bodies and using video to connect those portals to fantastical worlds that they can inhabit. We create the portals together based on their history, their dreams, and their relationships to their surroundings. I am interested in the idea of body and land being portals and am excited by all of the places, histories, and feelings the portals lead to.
What do you hope people feel when they experience your art? What are you trying to express? I want my viewers and audiences to connect to their feelings and potential through experiencing my art. I want them to wonder what kind of portal their bodies lead to and use the metaphor of a portal to question their assumptions about others’ bodies.
Which artists, past or present, would you like to meet? And why? Octavia Butler, Lori Anderson, and Jose Esteban Muñoz. Octavia, because her writing has opened the minds and hearts of many people I know and love, including myself, with her visionary Afrofuturist storytelling. Lori Anderson, because her work inspires me, and I would love to get nerdy with her about using technology in art. Jose Esteban Muñoz, because his queer theory has affirmed and inspired my performance practice, and I’ve been told he was a gentle soul.
Do you draw inspiration from music, art, or other disciplines? Yes. I am a multi-disciplinary artist.
A great thing about living in Baltimore is… The area around Baltimore has the best swimming holes of any place I’ve lived.
Tell us about important teachers/mentors/collaborators in your life. My collaboration with Margie Smeller through Make Studio (a space in Baltimore that supports the art practice of folks with disabilities) was one of the most tender and touching collaborations I have done to date. My collaborations with Stephanie Mei Huang, Bao Nguyen, and Cliff Doby have also been deeply impactful.
Sustainability in the art world is an important issue. Can you share a memory or reflection about the beauty and wonder of the natural world? Does being in nature inspire your art or your process? I travel to the prairie in Nebraska every summer to live at Art Farm, a very barebones residency I am in love with there. The prairie has taught me to love the little things we often overlook and how incredibly loud frogs and bugs can be!
AI is changing everything - the way we see the world, creativity, art, our ideas of beauty and the way we communicate with each other and our imaginations. What are your reflections about AI and technology? What is the importance of human art and handmade creative works over industrialized creative practices? I find AI-generated art quite boring. So far, I have not seen anything generated by AI that touches my heart or makes me think or feel something special. Art is a creative practice that drives many people's lives, and the use of AI will never alter that creative human drive to make and share ideas. Artists are incredibly adaptable, and I do not doubt there will be some incredible work coming out of the current AI boom, both in critical collaboration with AI and in opposition to it.
Exploring ideas, art and the creative process connects me to… my heart.
