As an artist, teacher and New School graduate, Camilo Godoy has been hard at work these last few months. In May, he was involved in a group exhibition, entitled “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow:” Art 50 Years After Stonewall,” at the Brooklyn Museum. In September, Godoy had an installation and performance for the Toronto Biennial, performed “Diplomacy,” a performance piece that explored Cold War dynamics in the context of choreographer José Limón, at The New School for the exhibition “In The Historical Present.” And, in November, he presented a solo exhibition titled on student loan debt at Open Source Gallery.
Godoy is a multidisciplinary artist that engages in many art forms: from performance art to cinematography and photography. To Godoy, an artist is someone who constantly asks questions, but is not necessarily focused on finding an answer. He finds inspiration for his art from everyday things, like a walk down the street or people smoking outside a bar.
When Godoy was coming up with his project “AMIGXS,” a zine of photographs he had taken of friends and lovers, he was sitting in his Brooklyn studio looking through a porn magazine from the ‘60s called Amigo, filled with nude male photographs when the song “Girls” by Destiny’s Child, which is a song about friendship, came on. He decided to call up all his friends and ask to take pictures of them in moments of intimacy, despite not picking up a camera since he graduated from Parsons in 2012.
This project began in 2017 during his residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP). Earlier this year, this project was one of many included in the Brooklyn Museum exhibition.
“I remembered the joy of making photos, which was a joy that I had experienced all throughout my teenage years and certainly throughout art school.” Godoy said, “So, I think one of my favorite projects is that project largely because I came back to photography and I connected with a lot of people that I love. It’s a project that is, I think, very much of togetherness, and I love that.”
Godoy said he cannot choose his favorite art form. “There’s this really beautiful film. I think it’s called ‘A Portrait of Jason.’ And it’s a little documentary about Jason Holliday, who was a black queer [artist] in the 60s.” Godoy said, “But there’s a moment where he opens up and he says, ‘I’m an experimental queen.’ And he starts laughing. And I always think of that phrase because I am certainly also an experimental queen, and I am working with a lot of tools and different modes of expression.”
Godoy is also an art teacher, working at organizations like the Whitney and Leslie-Lohman Museum. As a teacher, he says, he was able to look back on his experiences at The New School and reflect on the times professors did not adjust to their students needs.
While at The New School, Godoy participated in the dual degree program offered, graduating with a BFA in photography at Parsons in 2012, and a BA in education from Lang in 2013.
Although Godoy had a lot of learning experiences in college, there are still some things that he wished would change at The New School, especially, what he sees as a history of racial and class violence and its implications in the classroom.
“I think that’s why I’m so excited about this new president who is black and queer and brings a very important image to an institution that has been immersed in whiteness,” Godoy said “I feel that a lot of students will feel very, very empowered to see someone within those identities take on power. It’s a very interesting future and it’s exciting and new and refreshing.”
Godoy felt very nervous and unfinished when he left The New School, he said. He believes the administration needs to prepare students for their future after graduation. There needs to be more talk about how to budget, how to ask for a raise and how to tell if a salary is good.
When asked if he felt he got everything he could out of his time at The New School, Godoy said, “I had access to people and resources that certainly impacted the way I think about myself as an artist and the kind of work I make. So, sure, I’m in debt. But out of that debt I’ve been able to reflect on the politics of debt and the injustice of debt. And I just made a whole exhibition out of it, you know, so like it’s this kind of weird paradox.” Godoy’s exhibit on student loan debt consists of archived recordings of the different banks that own his debt calling him for more money with a prepared script. He emphasizes the different ways each person recites the script and how representative it is of the anxiety of the situation.
Godoy had advice for soon-to-be-graduate New Schoolers: “To never forget where you come from. Even if it’s a place of intense privilege, like that should never be something that anyone should be ashamed of. Whether it’s a place of privilege or lack off, any particular space that you come from, remember it and use that as a tool to look at the world.”