A singular figure, Machado was a Chinese-Spanish-Filipino-American self-taught performance and visual artist, activist, archivist, muse, caretaker, and friend to countless celebrated and underground visual and performing artists. In Machado’s own words, he “came into being” in 1959 when he assumed a pseudonym inspired by China Machado, the first Asian model to appear on the cover of a major fashion magazine.

Agosto Machado was a vital participant and witness to cultural and creative life in New York since the early sixties, from art, theater, performance, and film, to social and political counterculture and the dawn of the gay liberation movement. As part of a cohort of queer revolutionaries, including Marsha P. Johnson, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, and Sylvia Rivera, Machado participated in the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.

Long celebrated for his work in avant-garde theater and performance, in the final four years of his life he received acclaim and recognition for his visual art, a life-long practice realized in private until 2022 when he presented his first solo exhibition of shrine and altar works at Gordon Robichaux in New York. He went on to present solo shows at Gordon Robichaux in 2025 and at Maureen Paley in London in 2026, and a group of his artworks created between the 1960s and 2025 is featured in the 2026 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In Machado’s last three years, his shrine and altar sculptures were acquired by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in New York and the Toledo Museum of Art (Promised Gift) in Ohio, and his artwork was featured in group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Greene Naftali, the New York City AIDS Memorial, Candice Madey, and the FLAG Art Foundation in New York and The Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach, FL.

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Recognition for Machado’s lifelong creative practices culminated in recent performances at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Giorno Poetry Systems in New York as well as in profiles published in The New York Times, Frieze, Artforum, The New Yorker, The Art Newspaper, New York Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Paris Review, CANDY, ODDA, ARTnews, Wallpaper, Dazed, Paper, Artnet, L’Officiel, and apartamento.

Machado was a prolific photographer who documented Downtown New York for decades, and he employed the archive of snapshots in his ongoing art and installations, which he created in private within his home. Beginning in the 1970s, Machado collaborated annually with friends to create a self-portrait in elaborate makeup and costume, which he used for his beloved New Year’s card. Collaborators on this project included Shelly Durham, Rick Shupper, Bern Boyle, Tim Gault, Rick Shupper, Becket Logan, Vivian Lanko, Michael Harwood, Jean Claude Vasseux, and Santiago-Hoge.

Machado performed extensively, including with Jack Smith, Ethyl Eichelberger, Tabboo!, John Vaccaro, Stephen Varble, Angels of Light, and The Cockettes, as well as with Warhol Superstars Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Mario Montez, and Jackie Curtis. He was a collector of his myriad friends’ work, including the art of Shayla Baykal, Arch Connelly, Ken “Angel” Davis, Keith Haring, Peter Hujar, Gilda Pervin, Hapi Phace, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Uzi Parnes, Santiago-Hoge, Chris Tanner, Ken Tisa, Tabboo!, David Wojnarowicz, and Martin Wong and self-taught East Village street artists such as Grady Alexis, Caroline Goe, Miguel "Mikie" Perez, and Tomata du Plenty. He’s been a muse for generations of artists, among them, Shayla Baykal, Lola Flash, Allen Frame, Nan Goldin, Don Herron, Peter Hujar, Ryan McGinley, Jack Pierson, Collier Schorr, Jack Smith, Gail Thacker, Alice O’Malley, Uzi Parnes, and Tabboo!.

Machado created and performed several of his own solo shows, notably Babbling in a Garden, Babbling with Joe in 1988 followed by Babbling with Imelda (as Imelda Marcos) in 1989. These performances embodied his passionate philosophy that an artist is self-defining and everyone is capable of creating art.

From the beginning of his time living downtown, Machado felt a profound responsibility to preserve and memorialize his creative community. His acute sense of duty and care is informed by his deep appreciation of the marginal and ephemeral reality of queer and underground creative production and his profound experience of the AIDS crisis, which, in its early days, devastated his downtown arts community and took the life of many of his close friends. In the face of this immeasurable loss, Machado nursed scores of friends and faithfully attended funerals and memorials, saving each announcement, program, and card—many of which feature photographs of their beloved faces. Over the decades, he preserved invites, posters, and flyers from exhibitions and performances he participated in or attended, and collected artwork—what he calls “treasures and souvenirs from friendships”—acquired as gifts, through trades and inheritance, or found and bought on the streets of New York.

Through his decades of activity, Machado amassed an extraordinary collection—a kind of lost world that documents his own life and the wider creative history of downtown New York. These artifacts were on display as an ever-changing immersive installation in Machado’s intimate East Village apartment—a museum, shrine, and archive he affectionately called “The Forbidden City” after the legendary palace in Peking. His collecting and archiving were a way of life, his own Gesamtkunstwerk: paper ephemera and photographs filled bookcases, covered memory boards, and were stacked in high piles; prized objects were lovingly arranged and displayed in jars and on shelves and tables, or tenderly wrapped in scraps of newspaper and paper towels and stored in boxes.

Machado described himself as “an orphan with a sixth-grade education, and a degree from the university of the streets” who feels “very blessed he fell into the most magnificent, wonderful, Alice in Wonderland world of downtown NYC” (1). In the late 1950s, he decamped to Greenwich Village “to lead the life of a pre-Stonewall street queen,” he has said. “We came to the Village to express ourselves. I didn’t really feel I was part of the majority culture” (2).

During Machado’s time on the streets of the Village, he met Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis who brought him to Warhol’s Factory, and Marsha P. Johnson with whom he participated in the Stonewall uprising and the first Gay Liberation March in 1970. “Marsha was like a bodhisattva, a holy person walking through the West Village,” Machado recalled for the documentary film, Pay It No Mind: The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson. “I knew her from the mid-sixties and through the seventies, and Marsha always gave this placid presence and encouragement to be who you wanted to be…. She would sort of hold court in Sheridan Square saying, “We’re in the Village, we’re free, live.’”

Machado was an early member of the Gay Rights organization GAA (Gay Activists Alliance) along with Jim Owles, Marty Robinson, Vito Russo, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson, among others. He participated in many of the "zaps" (protests) that GAA organized, notably in Albany to stop the NY Board of Education’s discrimination against Gay Teachers and in Washington DC, where he helped collect the signatures needed for Frank Kameny to run as the first openly Gay candidate for the United States Congress. Machado served as a member of GAA’s committee that located and secured the organization's first permanent home, The Fire House, a groundbreaking LGBTQ+ political and cultural center at 99 Wooster Street in SOHO, and he proudly carried a banner for GAA in the Christopher Street Liberation Day March on June 28th, 1970.

The dawn of gay liberation coincided with the growth of underground theater and film; alongside Darling and Curtis, Machado began performing with “his spiritual mother and father” Ellen Stewart (founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club) and John Vaccaro (founder of The Play-House of the Ridiculous). In Machado’s words: “Ellen Stewart was La MaMa. She started in the winter and it was freezing. She didn’t even have working plumbing, but she was determined to open. Young white men kept going down to the basement, so the neighbors would call the police thinking she was a prostitute. They were unaware that she was trying to start a theater, and that the young men were gay men who were helping her, so they harassed her. She put plants in front of La MaMa to dress up the block, and they poured battery acid over them. They didn’t want any of us coming into the neighborhood” (3).

In 1971 Machado had his Off-Off-Broadway debut in Vain Victory as part of a star-studded cast including Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Taylor Mead, and Mario Montez, among others. “It never occurred to me that I would cross the footlights, but with the encouragement of Jackie Curtis I suddenly was on the other side, and people were so welcoming. I couldn’t understand why, because I don’t sing, dance, or act!” With characteristic humility and self-effacing humor, Machado attributes his successes on stage to the fact that “the other queens were too busy to rehearse, and I was reliable” (4).

Machado first met Jack Smith while scavenging fabric in a Crosby Street dumpster. “Jack was a pure genius, a visionary artist who had the strength and determination to carry out his vision with no money. Jack talked about going to the Middle East to shoot, but since he couldn’t afford to, he created an illusion of that faraway place in tenements and city parks. You were in another dimension when you were with him. He’d set up his props and say, ‘You’re walking through the swamp, and there’s a mysterious creature…’” (5)

“Jack Smith didn’t invent glitter, but he gave it a sense of purpose. Hibiscus and the Cockettes loved it too” (6), Machado is reported to have said. “I wasn’t officially a Cockette at that point, but then I was actually voted in when they were in New York” (7).

Recollecting the performances and atmosphere at Judson Memorial Church, Machado mused, “It was pivotal to the foundation of downtown, because they were so open to freedom of expression. They let so many people—from all the art movements—do their thing. They took away the pews. They had Happenings. There was dance, movement, song, and antiwar speeches. Gender did not matter. It was food for the hungry—every human cause. People trying to help humanity through outreach” (8).

Over the course of six decades, Machado has performed at countless theaters, galleries, clubs, lofts, museums, and underground venues including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), WPA Theatre, La MaMa ETC, Anderson Theater, Theater of the Lost Continent, Theatre for the New City at Westbeth, Bastiano’s Studio, Theatre Genesis, Judson Memorial Church, The Night House Theater, the Truck and Warehouse Theatre, P.S. 122, The Performing Garage, the National Arts Club, Dixon Place, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 8BC, Gene Frankel Theatre, Chandalier, LGBT Community Center, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Club 57, Mudd Club, S.N.A.F.U., Pyramid Club, P.P.O.W., Howl! Arts, Gordon Robichaux, and Participant Inc.

Performances include Amerika Cleopatra (1968), Vain Victory (1970s), Pearls Over Shanghai (with the Cockettes, 1970s), Persia, A Desert Cheapie (1971), Satyricon (1972), The Life of Juanita Castro (1972), XXXX (1972), Birdie Follies (1972), The Magic Show of Dr. Ma-Gico (1973), Starfollower in an Ancient Land (1972), Pushover: An Old Fashioned Homosexual Mystery Play (1973), In Search of the Cobra Jewels (1973), The Kitty Glitter Story (1974), The Significant Man (1974), Pro-Game (1975), The Future (1975), Ms. Hood (1976), The TV Show (1978), Medea (1980), Nefertiti (1980), Klytemnestra (1980), Carlotta, Empress of Mexico (1980), Lucrezia Borgia (1983), Ruth Ruth (1984), Souled Out (1984), A Virgin and a Queen (1984), Art on the Beach (1984), Hamlette (1985), Medusa (1985), Mrs. Wiggs and the Cabbage Patch (1985), Babbling with Leilani (1988), Babbling with Joe (1988), Babbling with Yoko Ono (1988), Babbling in the Garden (1988), Babbling with Imelda (1989), An Invitation to the Beginning and End of the World (1990), The Jazz Passengers in Egypt (1990), Charlotte in Wonderland (1991), The Doris and Bunny Show (1991), La MaMa's 30th Anniversary Celebration (1992), Skin of the Night (1994), The Rainbow Flea (1995), Under the Knife II (1995), Home is Where the Art is, or, Hybrid Affairs (1995), Snowman Serenade (1996), Songs Lucifer Sang To Me as I Made Love to a Dutch Male Prostitute (1996), The Life of Juanita Castro (1997), Dreamboats and Sleepyheads: Lullaby of the Lost (2000), Corn on the Cobb (2001), Kiss Shot (2002), Ravaged by Romance (2003), Superstar in a Housedress (film, 2004), Vintage Wine or Past Its Prime? (2005), "Where's Dorothy?" or "Lil' Tabboo! Ridin' in the Hood” (2006), Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (film, 2007), La Vie Noir (2007), Finocchio: The Lying Queen or The Sound of Crickets (2008), The Nightingale (2008), The Jack of Tarts – A Bittersweet Musical (2008), After the Heart is Broken (2009), Beautiful Darling (film, 2010), The Crystal Ball (2011), The Etiquette of Death (2012), Papal Audience (2013), Keeping the Tigers Away (2014), Two by Tavel (2014), The Questioning of John Rykener (2015), Shadowland Live (2015), The Spark between L and D (2015), The Wisdom of the Sands (2015), SQUIRTS: New Voices in Queer Performance (2016), The Last Days of Pompeii (2016), Marat/Sade (2016), The Glue Factory (2016), The Witches of Salem & The Blue Hour (2016), Hi-Fi, Wi-Fi, Sci-Fi (2017), CowboysCowgirls (sagittarius) (2018), TranGERELLA (2017), and Demon Pond (2019) (9).

Performances since 2019 include productions at Judson Memorial Church with Rumi Missal, The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), and Giorno Poetry Systems, as well as with John Jesurun and the Pioneers Go East Collective.

1. Stephi Wild, “La MaMa Will Conclude 59th Season with A FEW DEEP BREATHS,” Broadway World, June 10, 2021.

2. Kembrew McLeod, “Chapter 1: Harry Koutoukas Arrives in the Village,” The Downtown Pop Underground (New York: Abrams Press, 2018).

3. McLeod, “Chapter 6: Ellen Stewart Is La MaMa,” The Downtown Pop Underground.

4. Ibid., “Chapter 21: Femmes Fatales.”

5. Ibid., “Chapter 10: Underground Film’s Bizarre Cast of Characters.”

6. Ibid., “Chapter 16: La MaMa Gets Ridiculous.”

7. Ibid., “Chapter 26: Hibiscus Heads Home”

8. Ibid., “Chapter 9: Off-Off-Broadway Oddities.”

9. “Agosto Machado: Mapping the Legacy,” Performing Arts Legacy Project, Research Center for Arts & Culture/Entertainment Community Fund.