Studio visits 2026

interviewed by Sterling Dailey, bai 26 summer intern

Red Rae

(They/them)

Multimedia artist:performance, video animation,2d art and installations.

Red Rae Studio, photo by Sterling Dailey

Q&A

Session with Red Rae

Date:7/28/2026

Interviewee: Rae Red

Interviewer: Sterling Dailey

Question#1: What got you interested in Performance?

Rae- I got into performance through shadow puppetry and started performing. I did a lot of pupperty in undergrad and a lot dance in undergrad But I was kind of too shy to perform on stage so I started easing into it by doing shadow puppetry because I can have a screen in front of me so that I don’t have to feel exposed. But I slowly made my way out behind the screen and become more comfortable performing on stages. The reason why I like performing because there’s like an element of control when you are performing that enables me to be vulnerable on the stage.

Question#2: Why do you really love adding the color “Red” into your work or why you name yourself after it?

Red- I’v had red in my name for at least, like 12 years and I can’t really say, It just kind of happened organically, and then I started going by red, You know being trans, like chosen names are really important and it just kind of felt the most natural choice for a name because people already kind of call me red just cause it was part of my performance name. Something that just kind of happened like, ended it that way but Red in my work was kind of obvious because of my love of the color red, I love red of the color because it’s a color that no one feels neutral about, like people have really strong feelings about the color red and like, other colors where they can be like “Yeah whatever yellow” but red, everyone’s like I hate red. I love red or they always have reasons about how they feel about the color. And I thought that was really interesting. So I made a project about that, and I thought also prematized my name of like, you know, it’s a bold color that it’s like the brightest color in the color wheel and people feel strong about it, but I just feel so different.

Question#3:What was the story behind the most created room idea the “Red Zone”

Red- So that’s installed at elsewhere, which is a residency in Greensboro North Carolina. And they did a special residency during COVID where we all like quarantined together so it was a longer extended artist in residence. where we lived in the museum for 6 months. And the Red Zone was a space that i created in the museum that was on the 2nd floor. And I gathered, the museum was an old thrift store, So the whole idea with the residency is that you use found materials from the old thrift store, create art with it. So I collected all the red objects I could find that felt significant to myself in a museum, and created a lot of red objects, and made a transitional space in the one of the hallways because i was thinking about the red zone in the ocean, which is this layer of the ocean, where is like the way that light waves work is like they move different colors in at different speeds. And so there’s a layer of the ocean where all of the creatures are red because you can only see things if you like shine a red light at that layer of the ocean, and then below it, it’s just like deep ocean where no light penetrates. So I got really into thinking about that layer of the ocean in relation to the buliding and how the transitional space between the 1st floor, which was the bottom floor, and the next 2 floors and so then all of the other residents were dressed in red outfits and interviewed them and created custom red zone for each of them. To have experiences in and then filmed in to the performance around it.

Question#4: Could you tell me about your creativity path in high school?

Red- I was a nerdy art kid in high school and I got really goods grades. Also my dad taught at high school I went to. It was like a huge public school in New Mexico and so you can kind of get away a lot. If you when under the radar and I had befriended my art teacher, and as long as I was getting good grades she would allow me to skip class and hide in one of the back rooms of the art lab and just paint or do whatever. So I somehow was like, God, all these and all that so let’s skip in class while i’m there and smoking a lot of weeds, so you know sometime you can do it all up in that in the area. But there was a dark room at my high school, so I also got to learn dark room photography as not a lot of times with and that was really awesome

(Why did you pick Towson university and Bard college to have a master in fine art?)

Red- Honestly because of money bard give me the biggest scholarship.It was the cheapest school for me to go to, even though it’s one of the most expensive schools.In the country, they give me a really great scholarship. That’s where i went, and Towson was similar. It’s affordable. Had my favorite program. It’s not free, but there’s only 2 experimental performance MFAs. And the other ones at Sarah Lawrences is like insanely expensive, and they gave me a scholarship but i like it to mean anything. So Towson was affordable and cool. I really like the program it’s really gives me a lot of freedom to be a werid performance artist and explore your practice in like a really great setting and have great resources.

Question#5 : Are there any achievements you have made over the years?

Red-

Question#6: What was your first artwork you ever created?

Red-

Question#7: What are you currently working on?

Red- Yeah right now i have a show up at Connect and Collect that is all fire portals. And I have another show in September at Philly Fringe. That’s gonna be another performance based fire portal.
I’m exploring the idea of fire as a metaphor, and of course, of destruction and life, and how it can be a symbol for us right now to try to understand what needs to be destroyed.

Question#8: Where did you get the idea of using a portal as your work of art?

Red-The portal started with thinking about transfuturity and how trans people are portals in our bodies and how we are both like projected onto a lot of other people, but we are also paroling from ourselves of, like all that we hold and all the knowledge that our bodies hold. And then they just kind of have been thinking about that and expanding on that. Think about all bodies as portals and bodies as like a very general term for the world and things that we place meaning on like everything that contained meaning, history as a portal to different places, and using that idea to kind of focus in on different goals that they want to explore and reveal to people.

Question#9: Are there any other mediums of art that you want to try besides 2d and video animation?

They want to try getting into painting and drawing as a hobby.

 Final Question: If someone wanted to become an artist what advice would you give them?

Red-“Never stop making art everyone figures out how to be an artist in their own way and it never looks the same for people and that the most important thing is that you keep making art.”