Mac Folkes (1965-2020) described himself as a “creator and instigator.” A bouncer, participant, and performer in the burgeoning post-Mauerfall nightlife scene in Berlin in the 1990s. Folkes was part of a generation of Black queers who became part of the transnational techno revolution. “We reveled in being subversive and understood that the ultimate articulation of existential self-care is living an unmitigated existence unhindered by fear,” he later wrote. “Moreover, working the door taught me about people. It taught me discernment which informed my decisions. Mostly, it taught me to trust my instincts…how those rooms evolved was a foreshadowing of things to come.”

Fiercely brilliant and independent, Mac also worked in fashion; through his years living in New York and Berlin he was a model coach (including memorable stints on the tv show Germany’s Next Top Model), and a curator and creator. Brilliantly attuned to histories of music, art, power, class, empire, racialization, and Black diasporic creativity, Mac served as an elder to multiple generations of queer nightlife mavens and Black Berliners, Europeans, and culture workers. He never lost his anger at the tiny few who profit from a world bent on destroying its majority, nor his love for the pulse of liberation and resistance, of beauty in all its forms.

His untimely death in 2020 was a tragedy for us and everyone who knew him, and the Covid pandemic, which arrived immediately afterward, meant there was precious little collective time to mourn his loss or celebrate his life. The Schwules Museum now hosts his personal papers, which his friends (including Song Tae Chong, Eric De La Cruz, Edward Buchanan, Richard Stuart Perkins) carefully preserved after he passed away. This small showcase, built around portraits of him, is a celebration of his life and legacy, which demands scholarship, study, and care.

Curators: Ben Miller & Heiner Schulze

Photos: Jack Zander (l), 1997, SMU; Rankin (r), “Mac, from Portraits of Berlin,” 2016, SMU. (c) the artists