Andrew Suggs is a curator, writer, and artist from Appalachian Tennessee who lives in New York. Andrew’s work and research focuses on art and AIDS, queer art and artists, and performance.
Full CV
Andrew Suggs is a curator, writer, and artist from Appalachian Tennessee who lives in New York. Andrew’s work and research focuses on art and AIDS, queer art and artists, and performance.
Full CV
Dueñas de la Noche
Co-curator
Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College
December 7 – 17, 2023
ISLAA, New York
Sep 7, 2024 – Apr 5, 2025
Dueñas de la Noche: Trans Lives and Dreams in 1980s Caracas features Trans, a 1982 documentary by filmmakers Manuel Herreros de Lemos and Mateo Manaure Arilla that follows a group of Venezuelan trans women in early 1980s Caracas as they share their dreams and demonstrate their resilience against the backdrop of the city. Dueñas de la Noche marks the first time Trans is shown in New York, providing an intimate look at these women’s experiences as sex workers, their aspirations, and their community.
When the film first premiered in 1982 at the Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela, police attempted to arrest Herreros de Lemos, Manaure Arilla, and the twenty-five trans women film collaborators and subjects in attendance. After its premiere, the filmmakers encountered challenges in screening the film for decades, which made preserving and sharing the documentary precarious and dangerous. In 2022, ISLAA acquired four digital copies of the film to facilitate the study of this striking work and its complex historical context and to preserve the memory of these women.
The show includes ephemera and photographs from ISLAA’s collection, including portraits of the film’s subjects taken in exchange for the women’s participation in the film.
Dueñas de la Noche is co-curated by Omar Farah, Lucas Ondak, Clara Prat-Gay, Andrew Suggs, Micaela Vindman, and Clara von Turkovich, with guidance from ISLAA Artist Seminar Initiative professor and curator Mariano López Seoane.
>> Screen Slate review by Elizabeth Purchell
>> New Yorker review by Hilton Als
>> El País review by Ana Vidal Egea
>> Institute for Studies on Latin American Art
Installation views, Dueñas de la Noche: Trans Lives and Dreams in 1980s Caracas, 2023. Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Photos: Olympia Shannon. Installation views: Dueñas de la Noche: Trans Lives and Dreams in 1980s Caracas, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 2024. Photos: Sebastian Bach.