12 Queer Artists You Need To Know
January 3, 2020Art is the purest mode of expression. The artists listed below are some of the most important LGBT+ influences in the art world, according to ‘NBC News’. What binds them together is “one common virtue amid this pivotal period for queer culture: When language just won't cut it, art fills the void.”
Leilah Babirye
Sculpture / New York
Born in Uganda, as a lesbian Leilah was forced to flee her country due to their dangerously homophobic conditions. She moved to New York and focused on work. She is now creating forms “carved using traditional African techniques mixed with found objects including metal, plastic and wood,” as she has said. She has now also taken up activism.
Cheyne Gallarde
Illustrator / Honolulu
“I love to transform queer people into the superheroes I see them as,” Cheyne Gallarde said, “powerful and dynamic but with a touch of whimsy and camp.”
“One look at my art makes it clear that I love drawing fierce females,” he said, “but I also love showing trans men and bears represented alongside the muscled Adonises we’ve grown up seeing.”
Max Colby
Visual Artist / Brooklyn
“A primary interest in the work is to reframe conversations on domesticity, power and gender through a queer and nonbinary lens,” said Colby, who, putting it simply, creates decorative pillows and elaborate embroidery with a complexity he has now mastered. “I’m interested in subverting the aesthetics of violent, patriarchal systems through camp,” Colby adds.
Gio Black Peter
Painter / New York
The painter born in Guatemala is known for his “unique style of figure drawing” and being provocative through his art. If you want to know how I see the world, just look at my work,” the artist has said.
Cassils
Visual Artist, Los Angeles
Cassils is an internationally known artist. One of their most discussed works was in 2017 with the work called “Pissed” where the artist addresses the Trump administration’s rollback of the trans bathroom bill. For this exhibition Cassils collected their urine for 200 straight days, showing “the physical burden placed on an individual body when bathroom access is restricted.” Cassils said, “I believe that art can inspire a culture of change, and I hope that my work [within] the LGBTQ community can do that.”
Lex Barberio
Photographer, New York
This Miami-born photographer hopes to “expand people’s definition of gender, sexuality and self.” Her project “The Ambisextrous” shows her subjects as masculine, androgynous and feminine and has used a technique so that the viewer watch the subjects “transform” in real time. “It visually articulates something that's very hard to put in words,” she explains talking about her work and the way it contributes her view around the gender identity conversation.
Colleen Coover
Comic Artist, Writer / Portland
Openly bisexual, Colleen Coover is the creator of the queer-themed erotic comic “Small Favors”. Her comic-book artist community, described by Coover as “a very queer bunch” and her want to help people have fun creating 1960’s inspired comics with “a very queer vibe, translated through an early 21st century perspective.”
Marcos Chin
Illustrator / Brooklyn
“As a gay, Asian male, I feel underrepresented, and sometimes unseen, in today’s art and media landscape,” Chin has said. “I'm always seeking ways to present parts of me through my experience and through my art.” His artwork is created with a mix of digital and traditional techniques and express his queer sexuality whenever possible.
Nao Bustamante
Multimedia Artist / Los Angeles
An active artist for more than 25 years Nao Bustamante is known for her “bold explorations of race, class and gender.” She has said that she does not make art for the LGBT+ community but that the community helps her make her art, through their support. “I stand at the intersection of many communities: queer, feminist, Latinx, artist and educator,” she said. “I live all those identities at the same time,” she has said.
Marco DaSilva
Painter, New York
“I’m influenced by navigating queer love in my work but coding it in a way that only I can fully understand. The viewer is left to pick up the pieces,” the artist said. Last summer, he exhibited a series of paintings creating the shape of the Empire State Building, each with the colours of a different flag representing a past lover.
Jae Lin
Designer, Hand Lettering Artist / Austin
My work focuses on trans liberation, loving affirmations and acknowledging the possibility for post-traumatic growth and healing within all of us,” said non binary Artist Jae Lin. Lin said they've become part of “an amazing queer trans art community in Austin,” who creates all of their lettering with ink, marker and brush pens “before incorporating digital design and illustration.”
Austin James Smith
Designer / New York
Austin James Smith often uses his own face as his canvas. “I enjoy being outside that bubble,” he has said. He enjoys living in New York where he is free to express himself, a privilege he addresses in his collaboration with a Russian artist on creating an Instagram filter for which he has said “He expressed how hard it is for him there and that seeing artists like me helps him escape daily negativity. I'm motivated to be my true self while also reaching people.”
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