Ian Apollo Gray

Ian T. Gray (also known as Apollo) is a graduate student in the Performance Studies Department at The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (MA ‘25).  

Ian is an Economic Sociologist and Performance Theorist whose work focuses on how identity impacts the structures of counterpublics and non-traditional marketplaces.

After spending a decade in art advising, collection management, and non-traditional asset investment, Ian re-entered academia where he spent 2 years researching structural hierarchies in the Contemporary Art Market at Harvard Business School.

He has been a member of the furry and pup communities since 2014.

Project Title: On Furry: Genesis, Agency, Counterpublics, and Anthropomorphic Animal Identity

Project Description: On Furry is an ongoing mixed methods project on habitus, identity, and commerce within the furry fandom. In this project, Ian “Apollo” Gray seeks to both understand and document the state of the contemporary furry fandom as well as to explain how furry identity crafting creates space for the building of novel and fecund counterpublics.  

Gray presents furry identity as a structure that individuals and communities can adapt and use to liberate themselves from the heft of societal constructs, create transient but realized utopian spaces, reimagine commerce and marketplaces outside of the traditions of global capitalism, and engage in repartive communal action.  He theorizes that furry identity gives us a tool to do these things without the need for socio-political revolutions.

During his presentation at the 2025 NYU Tisch Graduate Symposium, Ian Gray, attending as his fursona Apollo, will discuss a section from the larger ongoing project and invite attendees to taste a sample from a furry convention; one of the pseudo-utopian furry spaces the project will explore.

Academic Interests: I am interested in the organization and creation of non-traditional marketplaces; my general approach is to examine these things through the lens of economic sociology, Queer and Mad Theory, Black Feminist Thought, and various ethnographic practices (traditional, product, and autoethnography).  My writing generally makes use of a mixed method approach bringing together qualitative and quantitative thought.

I enjoy writing about theater, music, toys, queer sexuality and kink, animal role play, and the Puppy and Furry Communities!