Legendary HIV Activist and Artist Hunter Reynolds has Died
according to ARTnews.Reynolds was most iconically known for his drag persona, Patina du Prey, who he created in the year 1989 — the same year he learned he had contracted HIV.
His signature look was not popular in the world of drag at the time; he straddled the lines between masculinity and femininity by wearing makeup but, for example, not shaving his body hair.
He introduced this look through a photographic series named “Drag Pose,” which featured a wigless Reynolds in deep plunging V-necks showcasing his hairy chest.Reynolds came out to his mother in 1973 at the age of 14.
He was the first out person at his high school and founded the first gay and lesbian student union. After college, his first huge movement in the public eye stemmed from a quote he read by artist Mark Kostabi, from an article in Vanity Fair: “These museum curators, that are for the most part homosexual, have controlled the art world in the ’80s.
