Homage and Reappropriation: Queerness Strikes Back at Tradition

At the heart of my artistic journey lies the reflection of a man — artist and art historian — whose desire, marked by homosexuality, flows freely through the various forms of male eroticism.

After a lifetime of practice, I asked myself: what would have happened if, for centuries, society had not imposed the relationship between men and women as the only model? If our desires had been allowed to express themselves freely in art? Which images are missing today from the walls of museums? My work offers an answer: an imaginary exploration of what art history might have been without these prohibitions.

Today, as setbacks threaten the gains of recent decades, I question my role in this struggle. How can I convey a clear message to keep this memory alive, to prevent a new erasure, and to offer future generations a vision in which our identities and our stories stand without compromise?

Toward an Emancipated Museum: Art, Body, and Freedom Without Compromise

I wish to contribute to the creation of an imaginary museum, freed from the constraints of a history dominated by the idea that only heterosexuality is legitimate. It is a place where my worlds of fantasy can be expressed freely, seemingly faithful to the codes of the past yet overturning their rules, and where ancient art can finally be released from the restrictive norms that weighed upon it for centuries.

The visual art world I set up offers an unashamed vision of sexuality: respectful of the other and always consensual, but deliberately distant from traditional, reductive, moralizing models that, in the end, oppress everyone. It is a space where the body and its desires can be represented in their reclaimed splendor, free from shame and repression.

I do not seek to criticize the artists of the past or to diminish the works that have reached us. My project instead aims to recall all that could never come into being because of censorship and oppression. My work acts as a revealer: it brings to light what was hidden or erased from collective memory. For every work in which homoerotic codes can be perceived, we must imagine hundreds of others that disappeared, and that might have enriched our visual heritage.

Challenging this established order means breaking with the systems that perpetuate shame of the body, its nudity, and its sexuality. It is a call for a free and inclusive art, where museums also exhibit what society sought to erase, and which invites us to rethink the relationship between art and the society that shapes it.

Through my practice, I already strive to create an experience of pleasure and intimacy where the gay man can recognize and fulfill himself. Yet since these aims can also lend themselves to humor, I often stray from the more solemn tone of the cultural world. Sometimes hidden winks slip in; sometimes I amuse myself by inventing a gay, fantasy universe that is at once intimate and playful.

Chimeras and Reinvention: AI in the Service of Queer Empowerment

In my artistic process, I sometimes use artificial intelligence, because I like this tool that digs into the unconscious of the internet’s memory. It acts like a “generative subconscious,” producing raw and fragmented images that appear somewhat like dreams or hidden signals, visual witnesses to what culture has long repressed.

The images commissioned from the machine and produced by it are chimeras: fragments of reality distorted, visions close to dreams, absurdities that are sometimes strange but often fertile. They recall what Freud called the “dream-work”: mixing certain elements, displacing others, and letting repressed desires emerge, finding an unexpected outlet in the image. I see in them a material to be worked, a terrain where the images censored by culture reappear in a striking way.

This dynamic connects with the intuition of the Surrealists, who sought to give visible form to the productions of the unconscious. My role as an artist is to choose, subvert, and recompose these visions, embracing even their errors or excesses to give them new meaning. This is where the boundary is drawn between what is generated automatically by the machine and what becomes a creative act.

From these sketches, I intervene with an approach akin to painting: I make collages, I layer textures, I add material, I play with colors. The initial image is then transformed to join a visual tradition that combines classical heritage with digital exploration. The final work retains the mark of this dialogue: my desire to create, the impulse of the prompt, the generative accident of AI, and, above all, my artistic choices that reorient and transcend the raw matter.

This work allows me to explore a queer and fantastical imaginary by reviving images long censored or forbidden. I see in it a way to reclaim representation, to symbolically repair an absence, and to finally give a place to those whose gestures of affection, embraces, and desires had been excluded from the visual field. My goal is therefore not to produce copies, but pastiches: images that draw on historical models — sometimes closely, sometimes with greater distance — in order to highlight what is missing and what might have been.

Redefining Virility: An Ode to the Male Body Diverting Oppressive Violence

My work refuses to glorify warrior bravery, which serves to disguise human brutality and put it at the service of conquest and domination. I condemn its oppressive uses, while sometimes taking up its codes in order to subvert them.

My critique is not limited to rejecting violence: it turns away from the figure of the domineering hero, yet retains certain codes as material for play and reinvention. I do not deny strength or musculature, but separate them from any power not freely consented to, within a dynamic that is voluntary and reversible. My work thus becomes an ode to the male body, affirmed yet freed from any claim to superiority.

When I accentuate the musculature of figures, it is both to convey their strength and the force of the critical project I pursue, while also using the aesthetic codes of our own time. These codes speak directly to the viewer and allow homoeroticism to be reinscribed within the history of representation.

I also propose another vision: instead of confrontations driven by hatred or the will to dominate, my male bodies unite in gestures of love. Masculinity is presented here in a clear and homosexual way, deconstructing traditional aggressiveness. If there is struggle, it is a game; if there is a body-to-body, it is an embrace; if there are clashes, they are propelled by desire.

Thus, my works foreground homosexual embraces and the symbols of masculinity, but far removed from colonizing violence or the myth of the triumphant hero.

My Struggle: Responsibility, Cooperation, and Commitment

As an artist and art historian, I see myself above all as a transmitter of culture, a bridge between eras, with the responsibility to make a militant contribution to our time.

I believe that cooperation is as important as competition in the creation and transmission of life. This conviction comes with a necessary humility: I cannot, on my own, fight all the battles of minority communities or those persecuted because of their sex, gender, or consensual sexual practices. The struggles are many, against ideologies that seek to push women back into traditional roles and reduce 2SLGBTQ+ people to invisibility, or worse, to their destruction.

That is why I focus on what I can offer through my own experience, leaving it to others to lead their battles, while standing at their side as an ally.

QFA

To read the full version, visit Chronicles of an Untamed Gaze: Inventing the Nonexistent