Maryam Hoseini
The LGBTQIA+ Histories exhibition brings together more than 150 national and international works and documents, demonstrating the diversity of LGBTQIA+ production and narrative, especially after the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1990s.
“The current global landscape for queer and trans people is uneven: acceptance, solidarity and visibility exist side by side with hatred, censorship and outright legal prohibition in different parts of the world. So, on the one hand, greater attention to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and other minority (LGBTQIA+) issues is creating more opportunities for queer and trans artists and thinkers. On the other hand, LGBTQIA+ people around the world – affected differently by their race, class, gender, age, and nationality – continue to face oppression. In this context, LGBTQIA+ Histories brings together works that thematize queer topics or are made by LGBTQIA+ artists, activists, and researchers. The show celebrates the richness and multiplicity of queer creativity in the visual arts,” say Julia Bryan-Wilson, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, MASP, and Adriano Pedrosa, Artistic Director. Queer, in the English language, originally meant “strange,” but at some point, it also meant “sexually deviant.” Since the end of the 20th century, however, it has been reclaimed by lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people as a broad term to identify themselves.
Juxtaposing the past and the present, the exhibition presents works from different periods and artistic currents, highlighting visions of LGBTQIA+ histories that transcend time and space, as well as pointing to strategies of resistance. In O beijo 20 (2024), from the series Álbum dos desesquecimentos, Bahian artist Mayara Ferrão uses artificial intelligence to reveal erased narratives and imagine new futures, creating images that simulate old photographs to invent an iconography of Black lesbian histories.