Got a Provincetown Love Story?
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Artist Miguel Braceli is Crowd-Sourcing Provincetown Tales of Romance from Queer People Worldwide for “Map of Love” Art Installation, A 2023-24 Fine Arts Work Center Fellow, Braceli will debut project at March 2024 exhibit.
Provincetown, MA (December 15, 2023) – Queer people worldwide who found love in Provincetown, the fabled LGBTQ community at the outer tip of Cape Cod, are invited to share their stories with artist Miguel Braceli. During his seven-month residency at Provincetown’s renowned Fine Arts Work Center, Braceli will transform their tales, including specific locations within the 17-square-mile town, into a large-scale map set to debut in March 2024.
One of ten visual artists selected to participate in the Fine Arts Work Center’s 2023-2024 residency, Braceli is collecting love stories for his community-based project Map of Love. Beginning December 15th, anyone who experienced love in Provincetown – a crush, fling, one-night stand, summer romance, first date, or a long-term relationship – is invited to share their story by completing a submission form. The deadline for submissions is Monday, January 22nd.
Map of Love, which will debut at the Fine Arts Work Center’s Hudson D. Walker Gallery from March 19 to 21, 2024 is part of a multi-pronged art project, True Love’s Kiss: A Queer Fairy Tale in Provincetown, that is inspired by the queer historical legacy of Provincetown. Along with his own story, the project aims to explore the diversity of love and how it exists, encompassing memories, lessons, thoughts, and advice to collectively write and perform a fairy tale of progressive values.
“I chose the Fine Arts Work Center’s residency program because I was long drawn to the queer historical legacy of Provincetown,” said Braceli. “I hope to expand the notions of love and relationships in the form of a fairy tale that can be told to the generations to come, diversifying the narratives of idealized romance.”
Braceli is a Venezuelan-born artist focusing on the intersection of art, site, and society. His educational and community-based public arts projects have been exhibited across Latin America and the United States, including Here Lies a Flag (2021) in collaboration with New Rochelle High School, and, The Last Swim (2021) in collaboration with the artists from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Braceli is also the co-founder of LA ESCUELA, an artist-led platform that provides access to education and brings together local communities to address pressing social, political, and environmental issues in formative creative projects. In 2022, he received a commission from the Percent for Art program for a permanent large-scale public artwork in New York City. Barceli has been featured in outlets including Brooklyn Rail, BBC World, HyperAllergic, and ArtReview.
The Fine Arts Work Center counts authors Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Cunningham; poets Louise Glück and Ada Limón; photographer Jack Pierson; filmmaker Jennie Livingston; and visual artists Jacolby Satterwhite and Tala Madani among its alumni. More than 1,000 fellows have passed through the program in its lifetime and have gone on to win, among other honors and awards, one Nobel Prize for Literature, two Poet Laureate appointments, eight Pulitzer Prizes in fiction, four MacArthur Fellowships, and five National Book Awards.
A multi-part project, True Love’s Kiss: A Queer Fairy Tale in Provincetown, will include:
- Chapter 1: Map of Love is an art installation/painting that depicts a collection of love stories related to Provincetown, introducing the place and its community as the main character in the story.
- Chapter 2: Dear Daddy is an in-person participatory project to collect advice about love and life from the gay elder community of Provincetown.
- Chapter 3: Demon’s Battle is teaming up with Provincetown’s elementary school where kids will create cardboard monsters and depict their fears, addressing and exploring children’s anxieties.
- Chapter 4: True Love’s Kiss is a performance that invites people to give Braceli a kiss or a flower in an attempt to find love, conceived as a large-scale participatory project at the Provincetown Causeway.
- Chapter 5: The Ball unveils Map of Love through a celebration on the day of the performance.
About The Fine Arts Work Center
The Fine Arts Work Center is an international home for artists and writers in Provincetown, Massachusetts — the country’s most enduring artists’ community. Founded in 1968 by a group of luminary creators including Stanley Kunitz, Robert Motherwell, Josephine and Salvatore Del Deo, and Hudson and Ione Walker, the Work Center has given artists and writers the space and time to pursue their work within a community of peers for more than half a century. The artist-led Work Center supports emerging artists and writers through its world-renowned Fellowship program, and also offers summer workshops and year-round virtual learning opportunities to advance creative practice. Fine Arts Work Center Fellows who have arrived in Provincetown as emerging writers have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur Fellowships, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Visual Arts Fellows have presented their work at the Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and at other venues around the globe. The Fine Arts Work Center supports artistic freedom, nurtures creative connections, and makes possible artistic achievements important to the larger culture.
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