More than half a century later, the whole month of June is celebrated as Pride Month every year, in honor of the Stonewall Riots, attracting millions of participants around the world. Through parades, picnics, parties, workshops, symposia and concerts, the LGBTQ community continues to honor the achievements of its pioneers, while at the same time drawing attention to the still very current issue its members are facing every day. Pride Month also celebrates those lost to hate crime and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

In visual art, many individuals and groups contributed to the LGBTQ activism, be it through direct action or by creating priceless archives, documentations, or portrayals. With the Stonewall Riots, queer art gained in power and rage, fueled even further by the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s through posters, signs, and placards – notably the Silence=Death Project, for instance. The unforgettable, poignant art made by Keith Haring, Isaac Julien, Catherine Opie, David Wojnarowicz, Glenn Ligon, Robert Mapplethorpe, or Félix González-Torres, does not cease to inspire newer generations of queer artists – young people who are successfully building upon their legacy by documenting the ever-expanding identity politics.

For Pride Month 2021, we have picked out 6 art exhibitions to see, online and offline, throughout June and beyond.

Tom of Finland at Fotografiska New York

The raw, explicit images by Tom of Finland are the epitome of gay liberation, in the sense that they show the unapologetic, tongue-in-cheek male-on-male desire. Extremely lean bodies, nude or in leather/uniform, with emphasized genitalia and lustful looks make up some of the most memorable imagery of the 20th century. The iconic Finnish artist, born Touko Valio Laaksonen, challenged the notions of homosexuality in a conservative society by offering provoking, yet positive portrayals of individuals who existed, and had every right to, within it.

The Fotografiska museum in New York is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Tom of Finland’s birth, with an extraordinary exhibition. “The Darkroom” is an exciting study of the artist’s life and work process, consisting of photographic portraits he used as reference images for his famous homoerotic drawings. Tom of Finland created most of these works in secret, as homosexuality was punishable by law until 1971 and was classified as a mental disorder until 1981 in his home country of Finland – giving these works an additional value.

“Tom of Finland, The Darkroom” is on view at Fotografiska New York until August 20, 2021.

and I will wear you in my heart of heart at the FLAG Art Foundation

At The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, there is a splendid group exhibition, featuring the works of 35 contemporary artists. “and I will wear you in my heart of heart” centers around the gesture of care and nods to a line from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” It features paintings and textiles that portray tenderness between lovers, friends, family, but also moments of solitude, at the same time exploring identity, cultural histories, and personal experiences.

The exhibition also appears to be an homage to a very hot trend within the visual art world at the moment: figurative paintings. Alongside the veterans of the genre, such as Peter Doig, John Currin, Derrick Adams, Joan Semmel, or Lisa Yuskavage, there is Salman Toor, whose successful exhibition at The Whitney Museum closed in April, or Louis Fratino, a rising star on the international scene, as well as the new icons of Black portraiture, like Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Jordan Casteel.

“and I will wear you in my heart of heart” is on view at the FLAG Art Foundation in New York until August 13, 2021.

Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989 at the Columbus Museum of Art

The year 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots with a series of exhibitions taking place worldwide. One of them was “Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989”, a show which traveled to Grey Art Gallery and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York (2019), the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, Florida (2019–20), and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio (2020). This last venue is now offering a virtual display of the show, for those who missed it.

The exhibition represents an excellent overview of queer art made in the first two decades after Stonewall, through more than 200 works of art. Pieces of conceptual, performance, and video art demonstrate the immense impact that the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBTQ) movement had on the society. From images of sexual liberation, expressed in the artworks of Robert Mapplethorpe or Tee A. Corinne, and the gender plays as seen in Vito Acconci’s “Conversions” or Adrian Piper’s “Mythic Being,” to the heart-wrenching imagery showing the devastating realities of AIDS and HIV, as seen in David Wojnarowicz’s “Untitled (One Day, This Kid…),” “Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989” is both a tribute and a reminder – that many of the issues the queer community struggled 30 years ago still persist today.

“Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989” is on view online at the Columbus Museum of Art website.

Sunil Gupta at The Photographers’ Gallery

In Sunil Gupta’s first major retrospective, The Photographers’ Gallery is showing five decades of pioneering photographic work. All the key series shown together for the first time, alongside some never-before-seen works, focusing on the themes of identity, family, race, migration, and the complexities and taboos of sexuality. The exhibition spans from the 1976 “Christopher Street” series, in which Gupta documented the burgeoning gay scene in Greenwich Village, to large-scale narrative portraits such as “From Here to Eternity” (1999), produced following the artist’s diagnosis as HIV positive in 1995, to “Reflections of the Black Experience” (1986), which illustrates aspects of Black people’s experience in London, to name a few.

An Indian-born Canadian photographer based in the UK, Sunil Gupta is also a committed activist, who used the camera as a tool for raising awareness and fighting for gay rights on an International scale. His artwork is an impressive portrayal of body politics, identity search and experience, and the ongoing issues within contemporary societies.

“From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta. A Retrospective” is available as a virtual exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery website.

Laura Aguilar at The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art

There are so many aspects to the touching photographic work of Laura Aguilar, perhaps best expressed in her seminal triptych “Three Eagles Flying” from 1990. The artist is standing naked, tied up with a rope and wrapped up in the American and Mexican flags while two more examples of these hang proud on her each side. Aguilar’s multilayered work imminently shows her struggles with her ethnicity, sexuality, and acceptance of own body, expressed through images rather than words due to her innate auditory dyslexia.

At The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, “Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell” puts together more than 70 works produced by Aguilar over three decades. Both personal and political, the artworks on view tackle feminism and queerness, at the same time offering candid portraits of the artist herself, her friends, and members of her Latinx community. From early photographs conveying political activism, to the nude self-portraits Aguilar continued to make until her death in 2018, the show in New York celebrates this important artist in a unique, unmissable way.

“Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell” is on view at The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York until June 26, 2021.

Leonard Fink at Google Arts & Culture

When we talk about the most seminal figures of queer art, and those who contributed to the visual archives of the gay liberation movement, intentionally or not, we can’t not talk about the legendary photographer Leonard Fink. An amateur artist with a camera, he documented his own LGBT life and culture in New York City, from 1967 until his death in 1992 – so much so that he was proclaimed “the unofficial Mayor of Christopher Street.”

While not much is known about him, his images speak volumes on the culture of the West Village’s gay bars and piers, or the Pride Marches atmosphere, which he photographed every year from 1970.

Fink’s work is held in the archive of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City, parts of which are now available in an online exhibition at Google Arts & Culture. The artist took thousands of photographs, depicting gay life after the Stonewall riots, and the cruising that regularly occurred on the piers 40 to 52 on West Street (in which he often participated himself), for instance.

Fink never intended for his photographs to be seen by the public, which we can sense in the intimate, almost diary-like one of his images. After his death, the LGBT Community Center National History Archive received over 5,000 prints and over 25,000 35mm negatives, that are now of incredible historical importance.

See the works of Leonard Fink online, on Google Arts & Culture.

The post 6 Art Exhibitions To See During Pride Month 2021 appeared first on Artiholics.

My name is Gianfranco Meggiato, I was born in Venice in 1963 and am a sculptor of abstract works in bronze, aluminum, stainless steel and marble.

Please describe your journey to starting your life as an artist. How did you start your career and what brought you to start showing your works?

Since I was a child I felt a particular inclination for art, drawing, modeling, I studied for five years at the Istituto Statale of Venice, where I came into contact with different materials: wood, stone, clay, plaster, bronze.
Already at sixteen I participated in a collective exhibition in Piazza San Marco, at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, organized by the municipality of Venice, where I presented my first work created at school: a perforated stone panel on both walls; it already contained the initial seed of my future plastic research.

What is the process behind the creation of your works?

Unlike many other sculptors, I never start from a drawing or from a project, but instinctively, directly, by modeling the wax directly by heating it in special stoves and then modeling it with the help of a heat gun and lavacrete.
It is a very long and complex job and a work is sometimes done over and over again until the satisfactory result is achieved.

What inspires your artworks?

Telling you what inspires my works is not easy, in the sense that my sculptures arrive a little on their own. It is not that when I start working in the morning I already know what I will do, but as I proceed, the idea born takes shape and develops.
As Joan Mirò said: “Images take shape while I work. In other words, instead of deciding to paint something, I start working and while I paint the image imposes itself or offers itself to my brush.”
Here in this definition of Mirò on making art I find myself very much there and in my opinion the artist is nothing more than an energy receptor which then manages to transform matter whatever their medium, plastic in my case.

Your sculptures are elegant and very powerful. Is there a specific meaning or message behind your Art?

On the general meaning of my artistic research I can say that I model my sculptures often inspired by the biomorphic fabric and the labyrinth that symbolize the tortuous and tormented path of man aimed at finding himself and his own precious inner sphere. In this context, space enters into all my works and emptiness becomes as important as fullness. 

Lately I have been increasingly attracted to the foundational concepts of quantum physics
One of the best known experiments in the field of quantum physics is that of the double slit (a variant of Young’s experiment) where the results change as the conditions of observation and execution change.
In essence, subatomic particles are fired through two slits and their behavior changes, changing their nature from beam to wave, depending on whether or not there is the presence of an observer assisting with the experiment.
A question then arises: what is the true nature of man if he is able to modify, with the mere presence of an observer, the behavior and nature of subatomic particles?
Here I think that contemporary art must be in line with its time, also having the courage to touch uncomfortable scientific themes.
Some of my latest works: Uomo Quantico, Respiro Quantico etc. refer precisely to a way of making art linked to these scientific theories where space and time would not exist but everything would happen at the same time and in the same space.
In creating the sculpture, I then proceed to perform separately, without an overall view, each single element that will constitute together with the others the final sculpture that will appear when all the elements are composed in the same space and at the same time.

In general mine is a plastic research that tries to touch current issues and inner research.

You exhibited all over the world, tell us about your experiences. Any favorite places? 

I must say that in my opinion, before being in museums, art must be among people and that is why in recent years I have given much space to monumental installations placed in squares or in particularly symbolic public places.
One of the installations that touched me most was: “La Spirale della Vita” made in Piazza Bologni in Palermo on the occasion of Manifesta 12, between June and September 2018.

The installation dedicated to the 878 innocent mafia victims, made in the shape of a spiral of twelve meters in diameter, made up of jute bags, culminated in the center with a vertical sculpture 4 meters high entitled: “Il Mio Pensiero Libero” because in the end only a free thought can free us from the spiral of death.

This installation was particularly felt and experienced by the Palermitans who came to see if the name of their relative or friend was among those imprinted in the jute bags; the Spiral of Life had then become a mausoleum to their dead.

When art interprets the common feeling of a people, remembering the fallen and at the same time giving a message of hope, I think it can be said that it has achieved one of its highest goals.

Tell us about your icomos-UNESCO award. What is it awarded for? When did you receive it? How did you feel? Was there any impact upon your career after receiving this award?

The Icomos-Unesco prize was awarded to me in Florence in October 2017 “for having masterfully combined the ancient and the contemporary in sculptural installations of great evocative power and aesthetic value.”
In June of that year at the International Sculpture Park of the Marca museum in Catanzaro I had created a circular installation of 20 meters in diameter consisting of 4 thousand jute bags with 8 monumental sculptures inside entitled: Il Giardino delle Muse Silenti.

These military jute bags were symbolically placed in defense of our values, of our culture, also given the repeated terrorist attacks that had occurred in that period: “Not soldiers behind the fortifications but sculptures: the Silent Muses, after having inspired the poetry the Muse defends it, the last bulwark against barbarism and death.” (Luca Beatrice)
This which had been my first large installation had immediately made me aware that this was my way.
I was thrilled by an art made of “social” installations to face the drama of the contemporary era and the Icomos-Unesco award received had made me understand that I was in the right direction.
At the end of the installation, the Marca museum has acquired and placed on permanent display in the international sculpture park, a work of mine 4 meters high: Il Mio Pensiero Libero.

How is the Covid-19 influencing your Art? What is the impact of the virus on you? How are you using the quarantine time?

In 2019 on the occasion of Matera European Capital of Culture I had created the largest contemporary art installation of the event.
An installation of 25 x 20 meters was made with more than 5 thousand bags colored with the 7 colors of peace, in the shape of the hand of Fatima, a symbol common to Jews, Muslims and Orthodox Christians.

The founding theme of the installation was: Everything is One, imprinted on the bags in the 30 most spoken languages in the world.

Well the year of Covid-19 made us understand how prophetic that phrase was.
We are all cells of the same organism and a body must remain united if it wants to defeat the virus.
In June of this year, the art magazine ArteIn dedicated the cover to my installation.

“Today“– writes Luciano Caprile for ArteIn –“we can open the drawers of the soul and take advantage of this difficult period as an opportunity for growth and enrichment. In this respect, the great hand of Gianfranco Meggiato, open to all humanity, makes us understand how truly everything is one (…) and how each person’s physical and spiritual salvation depends on safeguarding this conviction.”
Personally, I used the time of quarantine to model new works in view of the next exhibitions.

What are your plans for the future?

For the summer of 2021 I am planning a large exhibition with about twenty monumental works in the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, one of the most visited archaeological sites in the world where great international sculptors, from Igor Mitoraj to Jan Fabre and many others, can be viewed.

The theme will be “Know Yourself” the famous inscription on the pediment of the temple of Apollo in Delphi.

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