Agosto Machado’s New York

Tourmaline: Your work Shrine (White), to me it feels composed of many little things and it’s so alive. Can you tell me a little bit about what sparked your desire to make it?

Agosto Machado: The desire came from being so grateful. I’m gonna start crying. I was so grateful for everyone as a community. You know, I was a street queen, someone who lives on the street. And because we didn’t have apartments, we didn’t have phones and all that, we spread the news. “Don’t go there. They raided this place, stay off that block, careful on 8th Avenue and 42nd. They’re doing a clean-up.” And you share that just by passing on the street, up and down, so you’re helping all the family.

My respect for all these people collectively is why I made the shrines. I have 64 more boxes of things. So it’s a life’s work. It’s about our allies. They were very good, poor people who, well, maybe they had to hustle, but they didn’t mug, they didn’t steal. And if they had a little apartment, word would spread. This is when the West Village was for poor and working class people, and people understood that you needed a place. Especially come November, December, like now, when it’s cold.

You know, you’re just painting such a beautiful picture of the ways that you and your friends showed up on the street so that we could survive and make a living, showing up for each other in friendships. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about how you approach conveying all of this deep meaning in the building of your shrines.

Well, it’s really ancestor worship, my gratitude for all these people who came through my life. And—this is way before AIDS—many disappeared or went someplace. But they contributed to our community, and it behooves me to share my knowledge from the street with the new people.

I remember one of the stories you told me when I came to your apartment, about how Marsha would pass on different kinds of knowledge. Do you remember anything in particular that she would say?

Well, Marsha really was fully formed when I met her. And she encouraged everyone: “This is your life. Try to live it with dignity.” We waited until dark and then changed into drag. But it gave us confidence to know that Marsha, dressed as a woman or a man, had the dignity and humility to go about her life not bothering anybody. I remember, once I was walking at night in the East Village where I live and I saw this big black dude in a leather jacket. And it turned out to be Marsha, girlfriend! And she said, “I’m dressed this way because I can get an apartment in the East Village dressed as a man, and all they want is the money and the down payment. And then all my sisters can come and go.”

And it was just the forethought: she was getting an apartment for us, people who had no place to go. And she did that a couple of times because sometimes people in the building didn’t understand: is this a sorority? This was an intergenerational, interracial group in the East Village and neighbors were like, is this some cult or something?

Why do you think it’s so important for us as a community to show up for World AIDS Day?

They were treating people with AIDS like they had the plague or leprosy. And I just couldn’t let our peer group...I mean, people turned their backs on the community and were saying, “You know, Agosto’s helping them. He probably has it.” People were avoiding me and I stopped going to bars and other social places because people would sort of move away. And I understood. But I made my choice. These people needed help.