GAYLETTER

The Museum of Sex is presenting a new exhibition celebrating the Peruvian LGBTQ community — ‘Canon,’ “a multi-part series of photographs and sculptures” by artists Juan Jose Barboza-Gubo and Andrew Mroczek. I just saw a preview of the images that will be on display at this exhibition and it made me tear up, this work is so powerful. It’s a call to action against the violence that the LGBTQ faces in Peru. Another reminder that people like us struggle everywhere in the world.

Featured is ‘Virgenes de la Puerta’ (Virgins of the Door), “a photography series that reimagines transgender women as historical and religious icons inspired by Spanish colonial painting and 19th-century vernacular photography, such as the iconic religious imagery of Santa Rosa de Lima or the Tapada Limeña.” There’s also ‘Los Chicos’ (The Boys), in this series the boys pictured “represent an important, emerging, community within Peru’s culture. Defying patriarchal machismo and the antiquated social mores of masculinity, these young gay men have exhibited tremendous courage and tenacity by allowing themselves to be seen, publicly, as a thriving community within a slowly changing environment of acceptance.” The third series of photographs is the ‘Padre Patria’ (Fatherland), that “reveals the Peruvian landscape as spaces of evidence within the extreme, and rather common, circumstances of violent hate-crimes toward the LGBTQ community, which include rape and murder, as well as domestic violence.”

Also, the show they will premiere the video performance piece ‘Anda,’ featuring “eight gay Peruvian men in varying stages of personal or public acceptance of their sexuality.” The exhibition shows the artists’ effort to highlight the social cruelty that the Peruvian community is facing and to celebrate “the resilience, power, and beauty of their subjects.”

Canon is on view at MoSex until January 15, 2018. $17.50-$20.50, 10:00am–11:00pm, MUSEUM OF SEX, 233 FIFTH AVE. NY, NY.