Queer New York International Arts Festival: Clayton Lee
Company:
NYU Skirball
NYU Skirball presents the Queer New York International Arts Festival, featuring works from a diverse group of international artists, running February 7-17, 2024, at NYU Skirball. The festival, returning to New York after a six-year hiatus, questions traditional definitions and the understanding of queerness in artistic practice in concept and/or form. The 2024 festival features artists from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, and Germany whose works explore a range of contemporary issues related to queer identity and marginalization, opening up topics such as sex work, migration, Indigenous rights, political prosecution, and the new conservatism. QNYIAF, curated and produced by Zvonimir Dobrović (founder and artistic director of Queer Zagreb and Perforations festivals in Croatia), will include performances, a video installation/exhibition, and a series of public talks with artists and curators.
Clayton Lee (Canada)
The Goldberg Variations
Performance
In The Goldberg Variations, Canadian performance artist Clayton Lee freely references and entangles queer diasporic sexuality and aesthetics with classical music (Johann Sebastian Bach) and professional wrestling (Bill Goldberg).
Using deadpan humor, generosity, and a low-vibrating mischievous to facilitate and indulge the “what-ifs” of the live encounter, Clayton guides the audience through his sexual history while conjuring and perhaps manifesting new fantasies at the exact same time. The Goldberg Variations is an unhinged and reckless deep dive into power dynamics, sexual desire, domination/submission, heartbreak, vulnerability, tenderness, and the tensions that exist within.
Clayton Lee (he/him) is a UK-based, Canadian performance artist and curator. Performances include (◕‿◕✿) at The Performance Arcade in Wellington, New Zealand; Chapter’s Experimentica in Cardiff, Wales; Ways of Being, co-created with Michael Rubenfeld; Duets for Beginners; and Informal Beginnings. He was the 2023 Art Gallery of Ontario x RBC Artist-in-Residence. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK and formerly the Rhubarb Festival Director at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
Tickets start at $25, and can be purchased online, by visiting the box office in person, Tuesday – Saturday from 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm, or by calling 212.998.4941.
