FIAR’21 Resident Keioui Keijaun Thomas. Photo: Rikki Porter Photography.
ABOUT FIRE ISLAND ARTIST RESIDENCY
Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) is a non-profit organization founded in 2011 which brings lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, intersex and queer identifying emerging visual artists to Fire Island— a place long-steeped in LGBTQ history— to create, commune, rest, reflect and contribute to the location's rich artistic history.
Each summer FIAR provides free live/work space to visual artists who work, socialize, and immerse themselves in the Fire Island community for four weeks, during which time they are visited by renowned artists and scholars, who interact with residents through intimate studio visits, dinners, and discussions, providing support and feedback. The greater Fire Island community, as well as visitors from New York City and Long Island, are invited to attend free public lectures by these esteemed guests. This has been made possible through a partnership with Arts Project Cherry Grove, who invites FIAR to hold our programming in the historic Cherry Grove Community House, a landmarked LGBTQ historic site.
In this way, FIAR hopes to bring both new creative perspectives and prestigious art professionals together in this extraordinary location to foster the creation—and preservation—of queer art-making in contemporary art, creative writing and scholarship.
Our Statement on Building Equitable Community
FIRE ISLAND HISTORIES PROJECT
In 2021 the Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) launched the Fire Island Histories Project, an on-going series of commissions by artists, historians, scholars and writers, whose mission is to mine the many complex histories of the place, peoples and communities who have populated Fire Island, from the original stewards of the land to the present day. The first commissions include an indigenous histories project with artist Jeremy Dennis, a lesbian histories project with Esther Newton and Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva in 2022, and forthcoming histories of the Fire Island Blackout Weekend and of trans presence in Fire Island hamlets.
SECOND COMMISSION OF THE FIRE ISLAND HISTORIES PROJECT
MEETING ESTHER: A HISTORY OF LESBIAN PRESENCE IN CHERRY GROVE
BY KSENIA M. SOBOLEVA, PH.D
Ksenia M. Soboleva in Cherry Grove, 2023. Photo: Sunny Leerasanthanah.
In 2022, FIAR commissioned scholar, writer and curator Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva to explore the history of lesbian presence in Cherry Grove as part of The Fire Island Histories Project.
Ksenia visited with Dr. Esther Newton, renowned cultural anthropologist and author of Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town, at her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan resulting in a new essay entitled Meeting Esther: A History of Lesbian Presence in Cherry Grove.
Ksenia and Esther reunited in Cherry Grove for a FIAR public program in summer of 2022 and then Knesia furthered her exploration of this important history with another public program in NYC in discussion with former FIAR artists in residence A.K. Burns and Sunny Leerasanthanah in fall of 2023.
In summer of 2023, during our 13th residency season in Cherry Grove, Ksenia M. Soboleva returned to Cherry Grove to curate The Lesbian House, a continuation of this project, in hopes of activating FIAR as an agent of creating new lesbian narratives of Cherry Grove, especially those by artists.
FIRST COMMISSION OF THE FIRE ISLAND HISTORIES PROJECT
INDIGENOUS HISTORIES PROJECT
ON THIS SITE BY ARTIST JEREMY DENNIS
Explore the map
Fire Island Artist Residency commissioned artist Jeremy Dennis (Shinnecock Nation, born 1990) to expand upon his ongoing project On This Site: Indigenous Long Island, an art-based interactive map of Long Island, New York that aims to preserve sacred, culturally significant and historical Native American landscapes through photography and site specificity. Dennis gathers and combines archaeological, anthropological, historical and oral stories to build out the project.
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