As Art Week in New York kicked off with a bang, nothing was more anticipated than this year’s offerings at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show. A fair that always offers a refreshing take on the art fair experience, this year’s theme “WILD CARD” gave artists and curators the opportunity to pick from the fair’s past 11 concepts.

The SVA community is no stranger to SPRING/BREAK, as faculty members, students and administrators alike have participated in the fair before. This year our eye was caught by a group of SVA MFA Fine Arts alumni and former CE students who brought a unique and transformative booth titled Best Cult to 625 Madison Avenue.

Co-curators Marianna Peragallo and Zac Thompson's vision was to produce a show that offered a reimagining of church in service of a queer utopia. Based on the 2021 SPRING/BREAK theme “HEARSAY:HERESY,” the exhibition was set to act as a love letter to their queer chosen family, while opposing the anti-trans bills and queer disenfranchisement that has been spreading across the United States in recent time. Working closely with their chosen family and fellow artists Jay Michelle Elizondo, Michelle Girardello, Dulce Lamarca and Shannon Stovall, their exhibition booth was transformed into an intimate sanctuary to honor the queer experience. As told in the show’s statement, “The six artists in the show have become an inseparable family, bonded by their identities as misfit queerdos, trans-girlies, thembos, bi-femmes and fire sun signs. It is within this sacred space that we create and share our artwork.”

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