Pride celebrations in 2024 were clouded by a presidential election campaign in which Donald Trump espoused anti-LBGTQ+ sentiments. Since his victory, threats that were once hypothetical have become reality. Trump has menaced Maine’s governor for allowing trans participation in women’s sports, the State Department has revoked trans identity on passports, and the same forces that overturned Roe v. Wade are gunning for marriage equality. It’s no better overseas, where Hungary has banned all open LGBTQ+ events and the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has ruled that trans women aren’t legally women. Still, the LGBTQ+ community soldiers on, especially in the visual arts, where expression of LGBTQ+ themes are more vital than ever. Below, we offer our recommendations for the best shows of LGBTQ+ artists during this year’s Pride celebrations.
“Carlos Motta: Pleas of Resistance”
Born in 1978 in Bogota, Colombia, Carlos Motta is a New York–based artist whose multidisciplinary practice includes film, video, photography, drawing, and sculpture. His work focuses on the body as a “contested terrain” to explore themes related to politics and history as seen through a queer lens. These include social justice movements built around sexuality and gender, as well as the legacy of colonialism in Latin America from the Spanish conquest to today. Images of physical duress, violence, and death appear frequently in Motta’s work, which inveighs against neo-fascism and the Eurocentric narratives and value systems forcefully imposed on native cultures. Motta has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America. This wide-ranging show at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), surveys his 25-year career, highlighting a body of work that is as rigorous as it is dramatic.
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), through October 26