Group show: Fabián Chairez, Leche de Virgen, Eriko Stark, Tony Solís, Nacho Jota y M0'

“Here's my face
I speak for my difference
I defend what I am
And I'm not that weird
Injustice reeks of me
And I'm suspicious of this democratic cueca
But don't talk to me about the proletariat
Because being poor and gay is worse
You have to be tough to stand it”

(Lemebel, 1986: 82)

Leche de Virgen. Xenobinary Songs, From the series “Xenobinary Songs”, 2021, Photoperformance/digital photography, 76.2 x 50.8 x 4 cm

How can we theoretically address sexual dissidence from Latin American perspectives when the Western models proposed by queer theory fail to fully adapt to the diverse and complex contexts faced by the Latin American LGBTTIQA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transvestite, transgender, intersex, queer, and asexual) community? How can we build vernacular strategies that allow us to transgress the hegemony of the local sex-gender system?

"Vacation in Sodom: A Look at Queer Mexican Art" brings together rebellious and documentary works that subversively respond to Western LGBTTIQA archetypes through an ode to marginalized sexual dissidence, portraying the rawness of queerness in Mexico. The aim is to narrate, from diverse angles, the incessant struggle against the utopian and Westernized models presupposed by queer theory. Inciting us to overthrow the heteronormative and colonialist ideology that oppresses the various peripheral sexualities that shape Mexico's erotic, identity, and political landscape.

Fabián Chairez. Untitled 1, oil/canvas, 2021, 60 x 30 cm

In the artistic proposals that comprise this exhibition, we see a fascinating aesthetic eclecticism that interweaves Mexican popular culture with styles such as camp and kitsch to articulate new possibilities and dissidences that act as vehicles for radical, transgressive, and politically charged artistic expression, thus creating scenarios that transition between the everyday and the dreamlike to explore themes such as the search for femininity, secrecy, the night as an accomplice to perversion, the male body as an object of desire, makeup as an artifice of identity, homoeroticism, and the body as a terrain of struggle and resistance.

Mexican queer art doesn't seek to fit the Western mold, nor does it aim to entertain the "normal" or speak modestly so as not to upset others; it yearns to impact through its resistance, to show the harsh reality of being queer and living in poverty in colonized territories. It is post-identitarian and revolutionary, destabilizing sex-gender norms and highlighting the racial and socioeconomic inequalities that coexist in the region. Its subversive and transgressive nature seeks to tear down everything, including the queer practices of the privileged minority and the institutionalization of peripheral sexualities that, despite good intentions, end up repressing and rendering invisible the sexual dissidents ignored by the queer elites.

Eriko Stark. Lady Tepito, From the series “Portraits of a Divine Life,” 2016, digital photography, 68 x 48 cm

Kinari Chargoy