This Year’s Award Winners

At the Annual Awards Presentation on Sunday afternoon,
2018 Achievement and Cultural Icon Awards were presented
and an induction into the
Tom of Finland Foundation’s Artist Hall of Fame.

Bottom row: Ron Athey, Sheree Rose, Slava Mogutin, Hector Silva Top row: S.R. Sharp and Durk Dehner of Tom of Finland Foundation

FOR ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS AND STEADFAST COMMITMENT TO THE ART AND CULTURE OF OUR COMMUNITY

Hector Silva – Artist Hall of Fame

Hector is a self-taught artist based in Los Angeles who has been producing work for more than thirty years. Born in Ocotlan, Jalisco, in Mexico, he moved to the United States at the age of 17. He began drawing in his late 20s when he discovered his own talent. Today, Hector’s work is collected internationally, and has received acclaim in the US and abroad. Living in LA with its rich Chicano culture, Hector draws from the Latino tradition. Among his influences are Tom of Finland, Frida Kahlo, Chicano prison art, the works of M.C. Escher, and religious iconography. Hector explores themes of cultural identity, eroticism and beauty. Hector’s mastery of light and shadow on skin is captured on paper with pencil, but he is also experienced with other media, including oil and acrylic. He draws and paints from photographic stills.

FOR ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT AND IMMEASURABLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ART AND CULTURE OF OUR COMMUNITY

Ron Athey – Cultural Icon

Ron is a Los Angeles-based artist creating work since 1981. His practice includes body-based, writing, content philosophical, AIDS-y, and esoteric terrorism. Recent works include Gifts of the Spirit, an opera developed from automatism experiments performed at the Cathedral of Vibiana in January. He has been a friend of the Foundation…forever.

FOR LEADERSHIP AND STEADFAST COMMITMENT TO THE ART AND CULTURE OF OUR COMMUNITY

Sheree Rose – Lifetime Achievement Award

Sheree is an American performance artist, photographer and cinematographer known for her work documenting the subcultures of which she is a part and collaborations with her husband Bob Flanagan. Sheree was born in 1941, earned a master’s degree at California State University, Northridge and Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine. She has been involved in feminism and the punk scene. Her practice has been based in sex politics and activism within the BDSM community.

FOR ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT AND PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT

Slava Mogutin – Achievement Award

Slava is an outspoken Queer artist, writer and activist. He is a New York-based Russian-American multimedia artist, author and filmmaker exiled from Russia. A third-generation writer and self-taught journalist and photographer, he became the first Russian to be granted political asylum in the US on the grounds of homophobic persecution. Informed by his bicultural literary and dissident background, Slava’s work celebrates diversity and nonconformism encompassing the themes of displacement and identity; transgression and transfiguration of masculinity and gender crossover; urban youth subcultures and adolescent sexuality; the clash of social norms and individual desires; and the tension between attachment and disaffection, hate and love. He is the author of seven books of writings in Russian, as well as three monographs of photography.

MORE IMAGES

Published: 7th October 2018

Categorised in: For the Record