The work of various queer Latinx artists was displayed at the Queer Latinx Pop-Up Gallery as part of the ongoing Café con Leche series. Students and faculty enjoyed sparkling cider and grapes before they experienced the gallery.
“Pay attention to how your body reacts,” said Jairo Leon Gordillo, the Residence Hall Director of Latino Living Center, as students walked around. Many of the pieces, which included paintings and photographs, rejected the heteronormative and Eurocentric constructs about gender and the body.
The gallery featured seven artists: Laura Aguilar, Luis Caballero, Raul Pizarro, Hector Silva, Judy Baca, Felix d’Eon and Andares. Each artist, through their individual style, opens vulnerable and raw dialogue about art as protest, eroticism, colonization and the over-sexualization of brown bodies. This was evident when students shared insights about the intersection between queerness and Latinidad; many of them identified with both the works and the conversations that followed. The work of these artists is important and necessary, and so are events like this pop-up gallery where different Latinx identities come together.
