Leah Cupino (Erratic Grace) — IMMORTAL
Leah Cupino makes work that refuses to sit still. In this episode, we talk about the ofrenda she built for IMMORTAL—how it traveled from the street to the top floor like a Queer procession, like a public prayer that kept climbing.

We get into impermanence, devotion, survival-with-style, and the kind of beauty that doesn’t pretend it will last forever… but still hits you like it might.

Listen now. Share it with the people who understand that Queer memory is an engine, not a scrapbook.

TBQA / The Bureau of Queer Art
#LeahCupino #ErraticGrace #IMMORTAL #TBQA #QueerArt #QueerArtists #CDMXArt #DiaDeMuertos #Ofrenda #InstallationArt #ContemporaryArt #QueerCulture #ArtPodcast #ArtistInterview #QueerSanctuary

Baltimore showed up in Mexico City.

At IMMORTAL Queer Art Fair, I sat down with Nancy K. Blackwell, owner + director of Quid Nunc Art Gallery (Baltimore), and we talked about the question every artist is already living inside: What now?

Quid Nunc is a gallery built as a bridge—between emerging artists and collectors, between community and visibility, between “safe space” and real-world action. Nancy’s building something rare: a room where queer artists don’t have to translate themselves to be understood.

🎧 Podcast episode is live now on all platforms

📖 Feature article is live on TBQA’s Substack

This one is about Baltimore’s creative pulse, the politics of safety, and why the future of galleries might look less like gatekeeping and more like gathering.

Link in bio.

Gallery @quidnuncartgallery

#TBQA #TheBureauOfQueerArt #QuidNunc #BaltimoreArt #MountVernonBaltimore #QueerArt #QueerArtists #ArtPodcast #Substack #ArtistInterview #ArtCommunity #ContemporaryArt #ImmortalQueerArtFair #MexicoCityArt #CDMX #GalleryLife #CollectingContemporaryArt

Paradiso’s work is slow on purpose. Quilts built from construction-site materials. Embroidered bodies that make looking feel different. Pansies stitched on leather—soft, tough, tender, defiant. It’s queer history told with thread, and it doesn’t ask for permission.

The feature is live on Substack. The podcast is live now.

Read + listen—then send it to the friend who needs a reminder that endurance is also an aesthetic.

@john_paradiso_artist

#TBQA #TheBureauOfQueerArt #JohnParadiso #QueerArt #LGBTQArt #FiberArt #TextileArt #Embroidery #QuiltArt #QueerArtists #ArtistFeature #ArtInterview #Podcast #ArtPodcast #Substack #QueerArchive #ContemporaryArt #SupportQueerArt #SupportLivingArtists #MexicoCityArt

Eva Mueller came to IMMORTAL the way some people walk into a storm: fully dressed, totally intentional, and a little thrilled by the danger.

In this new interview from IMMORTAL (Día de Muertos, CDMX), Eva (NYC) admits what a lot of us won’t say out loud: she wanted Day of the Dead her whole life—so when TBQA built a queer art fair inside that ritual season, she said count me in before the ink was dry.

And then she arrived with work that blindsided me—in the best way.

Eva’s series “Vivir Muriendo” (living while dying) was made fast (deadlines: the great queer aphrodisiac). Skeletons, skulls, six characters, all her—channeled, embodied, performed with collaborator Anna Augustin (costumes, looks, and yes… the heart). Under the camp and the spectacle is the real question: am I ready for death? And the sharper one: how do I want to live while I’m still here?

Her definition of queer is clean and deadly accurate: not a rigid binary, not just who you sleep with—an umbrella of identity, tribe, home, and freedom. The opposite of “straight” isn’t “gay.” It’s permission.

Also: she’s wearing a giant bone-phallus in the interview, so please don’t pretend this is a tasteful PBS moment. This is queer culture. It has teeth. And props.

Now live on Substack (video + feature), Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our socials.

And yes—we’re inviting new artists into 2026.
Zona Rosa home base. Expanded CDMX residency. Low-residency options. Robust exhibitions schedule.
If your work is bold, intimate, weird, spiritual, political, comedic, tender—or all of the above—apply. Bring your evolving creature self. We’re building rooms where you can actually become.

Follow Eva: (tag her here)
Follow TBQA. Apply via link in bio.

#TheBureauOfQueerArt #TBQA #IMMORTAL #ImmortalQueerArtFair #EvaMueller #QueerArt #QueerArtists #LGBTQArtists #QueerCulture #QueerCommunity #ContemporaryArt #MexicoCityArt #CDMXArt #DiaDeMuertos #VivirMuriendo #ArtistInterview #QueerPodcast #Substack #ApplePodcasts #SpotifyPodcast #ArtFair #NYCArtists #NonBinaryArt #QueerIdentity #PerformanceArt #CostumeArt #SkullArt #CallForArtists #OpenCall #ApplyNow #ZonaRosa #ArtistResidency #LowResidency

Briheda didn’t come to Mexico City to “show work.” She came to close a chapter.

In this new interview from IMMORTAL (Día de Muertos, CDMX), Briheda—traveling in from Belize—drops the kind of truth that makes a room go quiet: before she arrived, she was literally digging her own grave as an act of rebellion and self-celebration. Not metaphor. Dirt. Shovel. Ritual.

And then: the pivot. The rebirth. The cleansing. The release of residue.

Her paintings hold a dialogue with her ancestors and a living archive of the mind learning forgiveness—one version of self at a time: inner child, teenager, twenty-something… all brought to the grave, all finally allowed to feel. Because in her world, feeling emotion is a radical act. Trauma is rumination. Healing is growth. Art is the evidence.

She says queer is simple: freedom to be yourself. No rules.
She says community is the mirror: the place we’re seen, where we stop crying silently, where the work turns into hope inside the dark.

This is why TBQA exists. Not to decorate walls. To build rooms where people become more alive.

Now live on Substack (video + feature), Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our socials.

And yes—we’re inviting new artists into 2026.
Exhibitions. CDMX residency. Low-residency options. Zona Rosa home base.
If your work is a portal, a prayer, a rebellion, a mirror—apply. We’re building a year that doesn’t whisper.

Follow Briheda: @brihedahaylockvisions
And stay close—this collaboration is continuing.

Video by @xuanrios

#TheBureauOfQueerArt #TBQA #IMMORTAL #ImmortalQueerArtFair #QueerArt #QueerArtists #LGBTQArtists #QueerCulture #QueerCommunity #ContemporaryArt #CDMXArt #MexicoCityArt #DiaDeMuertos #BelizeArtist #CentralAmericanArt #ArtistInterview #QueerPodcast #Substack #ApplePodcasts #SpotifyPodcast #ArtFair #QueerCurator #ArtistResidency #ResidencyProgram #LowResidency #OpenCall #CallForArtists #ApplyNow #ZonaRosa #ArtWeekCDMX

Courtney came to IMMORTAL nervous. Not about the quality. About the cultural gravity of what he was bringing into the room.

And then he did the thing great artists do: he stopped trying to “get it right” and started trying to be true.

In this new interview, Courtney (@absalom_fineart) talks about the pivot that changed everything—how soul-searching and Mexican heritage collided with his ballet background (Swan Lake, the one he never got to dance), and how he rewrote that story into a darkly romantic, Día de Muertos–charged legend: lovers, a trickster, bird-into-man transformation, intimacy, and that classic queer ache where beauty and death hold hands a little too tightly.

Then there’s the part that hits: walking into the first queer art fair in Mexico City and feeling “overwhelming” in the best way—because when queer community is actually assembled, the room starts to breathe. It gets organic. It gets real. It gets… dangerous to your old excuses.

This one is about cross-cultural flow, trust, and the moment the work stops being “content” and becomes a mirror.

Now streaming on:
Substack (written feature + video), Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and right here on our socials.

And yes—we’re recruiting.
TBQA is building the 2026 season (Art Week / Pride / Día de Muertos). If you make work that risks tenderness, risks pleasure, risks truth—apply. We don’t need perfect. We need alive.

Apply link in bio.

#TheBureauOfQueerArt #TBQA #ImmortalArtFair #IMMORTAL #QueerArt #QueerArtists #LGBTQArtists #QueerCurators #QueerCulture #ContemporaryArt #ArtInterview #ArtistInterview #QueerPodcast #SubstackCreators #MexicoCityArt #CDMXArt #DiaDeMuertos #QueerMexico #ArtWeekCDMX #ArtFair #ArtistCall #OpenCall #CallForArtists #ApplyNow #CrossCultural #BalletToVisualArt #SwanLake #QueerLove #QueerJoy #QueerCommunity

Jaimes Mayhew doesn’t make “maps.” They make portals.

In this short interview from IMMORTAL, Mayhew talks about queer and trans mapping as something way more alive than coordinates and gridlines: a practice built from trust, workshops, inside jokes, conflict, tenderness, and the radical act of imagining together. Their maps don’t say “you are here.” They say: we could be elsewhere—if we build it.

Mayhew’s whole method is collective: start with a room full of people asking deceptively simple questions—What do we need? What do we desire? Who belongs?—then distill those answers into landscapes that refuse perfection. Because perfection is usually just the old world wearing a new wig.

The big idea: utopia isn’t a destination. It’s a rehearsal. A group practice. A messy draft you revise with others. Over and over.

Want the full deep-dive? The longer-format interview is live as:

• TBQA Podcast (full conversation)

• TBQA Substack (written feature + video interview)

This is queer futurity with glue sticks, scissors, and guts.

TBQA / The Bureau of Queer Art
#IMMORTAL #TBQA #JaimesMayhew #QueerArt #TransArt #QueerFutures #UtopiaAsPractice #QueerCartography #CollageArt #CommunityCare #QueerLiberation #ArtAsMethod #CDMXArt #QueerMexicoCity #ContemporaryArt #ArtistInterview #QueerPodcast #SubstackArt #IndependentPublishing

At IMMORTAL, Eva Mueller didn’t offer one self — she offered six. Six characters, six emotional frequencies, six ways of refusing the flattening of queer identity.

In her interview, she introduces them like a cast of inner revolutionaries.

Vani Dada, eternally vain and unbothered by time.

Paloma Escura, the freedom fighter who eats small minds for breakfast.

Don Doble, the bisexual joke of patriarchy who answers to no one.

Lola Contessa, the horror slut reveling in her own glorious excess.

Cucu the Clown, because absurdity is sometimes the only honest language left.

And her homage to Frida and La Catrina — a flaming heart, a lineage of pain, and a new body pattern that rewards those willing to really look.

If you know Mueller’s history — from Gender Fuck to the emotional architecture of WOE — you know she’s never chasing polish. She chases truth. What she brought to IMMORTAL wasn’t WOE; it was a fresh constellation of selves born from that same refusal to hide.

These aren’t “characters” so much as survival strategies. Mirrors. Permissions. Proof that queer identity is not a single line but a whole unruly chorus fighting to be seen.

This is the spirit that drives TBQA into 2026: multiplicity, invention, artists who break form rather than shrink to fit it. If you’re building work that lives in that territory — the charged, the strange, the unguarded — TBQA’s residencies and exhibitions are opening their doors again soon. Start thinking about what you want to bring into the room.

IMMORTAL 2025 gave us Mueller’s six selves. 2026 is wide open for whatever you’re becoming next.

Video by @xuanrios

#IMMORTAL2025 #TBQA #EvaMueller #QueerArt #CDMXArt #DiaDeMuertosArt #SelfPortraiture #IdentityInFlux #GenderFuck #WOE #QueerMultiplicity #ArtAsResistance #PhotographyArt #ContemporaryArt #QueerCulture