Hunter Reynolds
For over twenty years Hunter Reynolds has been using photography, performance, and installation to express his experience as an HIV positive gay man. His work addresses issues of gender, identity, socio-politics, sexual histories, mourning, loss, survival, hope and healing. Reynolds was a an early member of ACT UP, and in 1989 co-founded Art Positive, an affinity group of ACT-UP to fight homophobia and censorship in the arts.
In the 1990's Reynolds performed extensively as his now legendary alter ego, Patina du Prey. Patina existed as a mythical figure that deliberately disrupts gender icons in order to relate to the viewer as a shamanistic transgendered embodiment of fantasy and healing. For eight years he collaborated with documentary photographer Maxine Henryson on I-DEA, The Goddess Within, an ongoing photographic diary of 25 street performances done all over the world. At the time, Reynolds' diagnosis was a pending death sentence making the photographs a moving and poignant record of the years before HIV drugs were available. More recently, Reynolds has been creating shamanistic fire rituals on a sacred Mohawk site at the Easton Mountain Retreat Center in upstate New York. During celestial celebrations and purification ceremonies, often with participating guests of the …
For over twenty years Hunter Reynolds has been using photography, performance, and installation to express his experience as an HIV positive gay man. His work addresses issues of gender, identity, socio-politics, sexual histories, mourning, loss, survival, hope and healing. Reynolds was a an early member of ACT UP, and in 1989 co-founded Art Positive, an affinity group of ACT-UP to fight homophobia and censorship in the arts.
In the 1990's Reynolds performed extensively as his now legendary alter ego, Patina du Prey. Patina existed as a mythical figure that deliberately disrupts gender icons in order to relate to the viewer as a shamanistic transgendered embodiment of fantasy and healing. For eight years he collaborated with documentary photographer Maxine Henryson on I-DEA, The Goddess Within, an ongoing photographic diary of 25 street performances done all over the world. At the time, Reynolds' diagnosis was a pending death sentence making the photographs a moving and poignant record of the years before HIV drugs were available. More recently, Reynolds has been creating shamanistic fire rituals on a sacred Mohawk site at the Easton Mountain Retreat Center in upstate New York. During celestial celebrations and purification ceremonies, often with participating guests of the retreat, Reynolds creates elaborately decorated Totem fire altars made of fallen trees adorned with offerings. According to Mongolian tradition, once the offerings are burnt, the devotees are cleansed
Reynolds has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as Artists Space in New York, Creative Time in New York, Boston’s ICA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, NGBK Berlin, and DOCUMENTA in Kassel. He has been included in group exhibitions at the New Museum in New York, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Aldrich Museum of Art in Ridgefield, Akademie der Kunste in Berlin and more. Reynolds is the recipient of several Pollock Krasner awards.
Courtesy of P.P.O.W.