pARADISE PORTALS
05.09.2025 – 06.13.2025
LEFT: Red Rae, with Aave Blue, The Shape of Hunger (2025), documented by Lena McBean.
RIGHT: Red Rae, with Rahne Alexander, Everyone Loves a **** ***** (2025), documented by Lena McBean.
Opening Reception
Friday, 05.09.2025
5:00 – 9:00 p.m.
gallery hours
Thursday – Saturday
1:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Disclaimer
This exhibition contains content related to queerness, nudity, and other adult themes. Visitors aged 13 and under must be accompanied by an adult to enter the gallery.
LEFT: Red Rae, with Aave Blue, The Shape of Hunger (2025). Documentation by Lena McBean.
RIGHT: Red Rae, Mending the Fabric of Reality (2025). Documentation by Lena McBean.
AREA 405 is proud to present Paradise Portals, a seven-channel multimedia video installation and performance directed by Red Rae, a 2024 Rubys Artist Grant awardee. The exhibition opens on May 9, 2025, and runs through June 13, 2025, featuring performances each weekend, 8 in total, with a sliding-scale ticket price of $10–$50. The opening reception will take place May 9 from 5:00 – 9:00, participating in the Station North Second Friday Art Walk.
Video installations in Paradise Portals weave together performance documentation, drone footage, livestream video, and green screen technology to create portals between seven performers’ bodies and the environments that hold personal significance for them. Set within the historically preserved industrial space of AREA 405, the projections loop across multiple circular canvases and plexiglass creating the illusion of portals floating in space. Each week, audiences are invited to experience live performances that unfold simultaneously with the illuminated moving images.
Paradise Portals (2025). Documentation by Lena McBean.
The term portal was chosen by artist and director Red Rae with the belief that they open into alternative realities, warping fantasies, grief, loss, love and more. They prompted questions to seven collaborators — renowned queer visual artists, musicians, drag queens, and scholars: Eli Erlick, Aave, Rahne Alexander, Soleil, Bao Nguyen, Alexander D'Agostino, Amy Reid, Pangelica, Bryce Hample, Arit Emmanuela and Max Gregg “If your body is a portal, where does it lead?” In response to this inquiry, Red and the others guide us through the portals bending reality and granting us new perspectives on life and identity.
The exhibition Paradise Portals is made possible by The Rubys Artist Grant Program and the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.
Red Rae, with Bao Nguyen, Do It For Me (2025), Documented by Lena McBean.
Opening Performance
Friday, 05.09.2025
Free
Door at 5:00 p.m., Performance at 7:00 p.m.
Red Rae, Aave Blue, and Alexander D’Agostino
Sunday, 05.11.2025
Sliding Scale: $10–$50
Door at 7:00 p.m., Performance at 8:00 p.m.
Red Rae, Alexander D’Agostino, and Rahne Alexander
Friday, 05.16.2025
Sliding Scale: $10–$50
Door at 7:00 p.m., Performance at 8:00 p.m.
Red Rae, Alexander D’Agostino, and Bao Nguyen
Friday, 05.23.2025
Sliding Scale: $10–$50
Door at 7:00 p.m., Performance at 8:00 p.m.
Red Rae, Alexander D’Agostino, and Rahne Alexander
Friday, 05.30.2025
Sliding Scale: $10–$50
Door at 7:00 p.m., Performance at 8:00 p.m.
Red Rae, Soleil, Bao Nguyen, and Live DJ Set by ILUSM
Artist talk
sunday, 06.08.2025
Free
6:00 p.m.
Red Rae and Eli Erlick
CLOSING PERFORMANCE
Friday, 06.13.2025
Free
Door at 5:00 p.m., Performance at 8:00 p.m.
Red Rae, Live set by GRL PWR
Rae Red, Paradise Portals (2025), image still.
Image courtesy to the artist.
Rae Red performing at Paradise Portals, documented by Lena McBean
artist
Rae Red (they/them) is a multimedia performer. They imbue their projects with playful sincerity while examining ideas of perception and transformation, often through the lens of trans futurity.
