En Foco, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center (The Center), and Gabriel G. Torres, present Divine Queerness: Forms and Tools Methods of Healing, an exhibition hosted at the Center from June 1 – September 10, 2023. The exhibition features artists Amarise Carrera, Debmalya Ray Choudhuri, Benjamin Eichert, Lola Flash, Dauris Martinez, Gabriel Garcia Roman, and Giancarlo Montes Santangelo. Curated by Gabriel G. Torres


Divine Queerness: Forms and Tools Methods of Healing

On view:
June 1 – September 10, 2023
Opening Reception:
Thursday, June 1, 2023 | 6-9 pm
Location:
The Center, 208 W 13th St, New York, NY 10011

Divine Queerness: Forms and Tools Methods of Healing

On view: 
June 1 – September 10, 2023
Gabriel G. Torres, Curator

Divine Queerness: Forms and Tools Methods of Healing is a visual investigation of the different ways queer identity shapes the healing mechanisms and processes of People from the Global Majority. 7 artists examine their own personal, ancestral, and communal journey with healing through different forms and tools, rooted in radical imagination as a way of resilience and a necessary form of reclamation; overcoming all obstacles to achieve a notion of divinity.

How do we define divinity within our queerness? And how do we reclaim it when across the centuries,  it has been stripped from our identity? What are the forms and tools we use to heal? How does healing serve as a radical expression of our resilience? A visualization of one’s own journey in the labyrinths of the mind, as a method to understand and overcome trauma;  The process of collaging to negotiate the violence of the colonial past and the present;  A retrospective of melancholia and grief, to mourn and release the present struggles of the lgbtqia+ community; The transgression of ancestral ritualistic practices, with new parameters only made possible by queerness; collaged sculptures to reclaim and celebrate the perception of the self; an afro futuristic alter ego to envision freedom; and a series of portraits, documenting and honoring the divinity of selected members of the queer community.

En Foco is supported in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, BronxCare Health System, The Mellon Foundation, The Joy of Giving Something, Inc., New York Community Trust Mosaic Network & Fund the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, Ford Foundation, The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Jerome Foundation, The Hispanic Federation and Aguado-Pavlick Arts Fund.

The Center’s arts and cultural programming is made possible with support from The Kors Le Pere Foundation.