Edie Fake is a painter and visual artist whose work examines issues of trans identity and “queer space” through the lens of architecture and ornamentation. Fake’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo shows at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; NY Broadway Gallery, NYC; Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco; and Western Exhibitions, Chicago. His collection of comics, Gaylord Phoenix, won the 2011 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel and he was among the first recipients of Printed Matter’s Awards for Artists. Fake’s latest projects include mural installations for The Drawing Center, NYC and BAMPFA in Berkeley, CA.
Since moving from first Chicago, then to Los Angeles while briefly attending grad school at USC, to now the high desert of Joshua Tree, CA, Fake’s work has evolved from his acclaimed Memory Palaces series — reimagined facades of urban lesbian bars and gay nightclubs — to a new feeling of vulnerability due to shifts in the U.S. social and political climate. The work blurs lines between architecture and body with structures adorned by elements that seem to be both decorative and protective. Architectural components are used as visual metaphors for the ways in which definition and validation elude trans identities. Says Fake, “More and more I’m trying to bring an anarchy into that architecture, or a fantasy and ecstasy of what queer space is and can be.”
Education: BFA, Rhode Island School of Design, 2002; graduate studies at the University of Southern California.
