Nate Nocete is a Filipino-American writer, researcher, and design historian from Orlando, Florida. He holds a BA in Marketing with a Certificate in Visualization and Design from the University of South Florida and is currently pursuing an MA in The History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parsons. His research focuses on queer spatial memory, particularly in relation to nightlife and community spaces. Having witnessed the lasting impact of the Pulse nightclub shooting on Orlando’s LGBTQ+ community, he is interested in how sites of joy and resistance become memorialized. He previously was the Marketing Director for Collective, an LGBTQ+ social app, and last semester, he studied Curating Public Memory with Julia Foulkes and Radhika Subramaniam, deepening his understanding of how history materializes in public space. The Stonewall Exhibition Design Competition presents an opportunity to merge these interests—developing a bold, participatory, and performative installation that extends Stonewall’s legacy beyond commemoration, blurring physical and digital space while inviting audiences to engage with queer pasts and possible futures.
Gummy Nichols is a curator and researcher from Virginia. She holds a BA in The History of Art and Architecture from Boston University and is currently pursuing an MA in The History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parsons, with a graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her research focuses on the aesthetics of maximalism and ‘camp’ within contemporary queer scholarship, building on her undergraduate independent studies. Outside of academia, she is co-creating Junk Drawer, a queer art zine featuring visual art, writing, interviews, and physical pop-up installations reflecting on contemporary queer culture.
Kevin She is a Taiwanese-American designer from Texas. He holds a BS in Fashion and a BBA in Business Management from the University of Texas Austin and is currently pursuing an MFA in Interior Design at Parsons. Coming from an entrepreneurial family, he initially studied business before becoming the first in his family to pursue a career in the arts. His work is deeply rooted in creating spaces that foster comfort, safety, and belonging—ensuring that young queer people can experience the same sense of possibility and home that visits to NYC once gave him as a teenager. His research explores the intersections of mental health, hoarding, and material attachment, drawing on indigenous knowledge and biophilic design to offer alternative perspectives on spatial accumulation and sustainability. Contributing to this project feels like a full-circle moment—his first visit to New York coincided with Pride, where, despite being closeted at the time, he felt a profound sense of connection witnessing the city’s celebration of queer identity.
Violet Ruby is a multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles, currently based in New York, where she is pursuing a BFA in Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design with a minor in Gender Studies and Queer Theory. Her work explores identity, vulnerability, and queer experience through sculpture, performance, and collage. No One Came for Spaghetti is a video performance that reflects on the quiet devastation of queer isolation and the longing embedded in rituals of togetherness. Seated at a dinner table, the artist eats an entire family-sized serving of spaghetti alone. Across from her, she repeatedly refills a plate and pours wine for an imagined guest who never arrives. The piece reframes the dinner table—a space typically reserved for gathering and love—as one of humiliation and absence, revealing the ache of anticipation and the pain of being unseen.
Originally from Arkansas, Basil Roberts studies Illustration and Literary Studies at The New School. Their work engages with themes of Southern identity, queerness, and religion, using media such as animation, printmaking, and painting to tell folk-inspired narratives. “My mom used to say, ‘feed them with a long-handled spoon,’ when talking about people who take more than they give. As a queer person from the South, I often feel torn between a deep love for my hometown and the freedom I’ve found in the city. This piece expresses the tension of holding on to my roots from afar, while allowing myself to grow in a new place.”
Avi Deep is a graphic designer and illustrator from Bangalore, India, now based in New York City. His practice blends visual storytelling with emotion, focusing on themes of joy, identity, and community. His zine Trans for Trans: Real Life is based on a series of interviews with T4T individuals and celebrates trans joy. Each story was adapted into a miniature comic, drawn from memories and love stories shared by trans people. Through these illustrations, Avi highlights the richness of trans relationships and the power of storytelling within the community.
These works explore joy, embodiment, and archival practice as a queer trans person. The first piece is a celebration of trans masculinity—bold, regal, and maximalist. By centering body hair, a commonly scrutinized detail, the work transforms shame into dazzling self-expression. The second work, part of his capstone project, is a ritualized archive of trans history centered on the process of taking HRT injections. Participants organize their medicine in custom compartments and receive a year’s worth of advice from fellow trans people, alongside weekly scratch-off prompts that encourage personal reflection and documentation. “My kit is about imagining and preserving a trans future—one that’s personal and intimate, yet capable of being shared, archived, and remembered. It’s for the individual, but also a gesture toward collective memory—a refusal to be erased.”
Protection captures the dualities of queer life—the beauty and the burden. It reflects the ongoing process of preparing oneself to exist in a world not built for you. In Sky’s words: “With queerness comes struggle and hardship, but also individuality and the freedom to express it. This piece holds space for both.”
Stephen Yiling Peng is a photographer from Shanghai, China, currently based in Brooklyn and pursuing an MFA at Parsons School of Design. With a background in theater and storytelling, his work explores queer intimacy, youth, and masculinity through fragmentary, emotionally resonant glimpses of everyday life. Cola Explosion, shot in a frat backyard during a storm, captures a chaotic burst of joy, intimacy, and chosen family. The fizzy, excessive gesture subverts traditional dinner table rituals, replacing etiquette with theatrical, embodied play. Meat Sandwich, taken on a sunlit boys’ beach trip, is a quiet study in comfort and care. Fingers curl around a sandwich, sunlight grazes bare skin, and food becomes a gentle love language among friends. In both images, eating together becomes a radical act of queer belonging—messy, mundane, and deeply felt.
