Images of Ambiente traces the genealogy for gay and lesbian art in four Latin American countries (Mexico, Brazil,Cuba and Puerto Rico) during the last two hundred years. A separate chapter is devoted to artists originating from these countries, yet who were either born in or migrated to Europe or North America.
It is a pioneering study, focusing for the first time on the expressions of 'homotexuality' - at times subtle and implicit, at times bold and assertive - detectable in many a drawing, painting, sculpture, photograph, performance or installation. Representations of a homosexual imaginaire were indeed frequent in the visual arts of Latin America, but have so far not been studied. Images of Ambiente demonstrates how they are inscribed within the continent's complex and ever-changing social and cultural construction of sexual practices and identities, while highlighting how such visual expression of sexual diversity was moulded partially by political circumstances or strategic considerations.
The book is an important contribution to the historical study of gay and lesbian art, yet calls for altering parameters in ways that fully recognize social and cultural difference. It provides a chronological and conceptual framework for studing the tropes of 'homotextual' expression in a Latin American context. More than one hundred illustrations, gathered from various sources across Latin America, North America and Europe, allow the reader to personally witness this fascinating and, until now, concealed story.
Rudi C. Bleys is an independent scholar and co-editor of Vlaanderen en Latijns Amerika: 500 jaar confrontatie en metissage and the author of The Geography of Perversion: Male-to-Male Sexual Behaviour and the Ethnographic Imagination, 1750-1918. He currently lives in Antwerp, Belgium.
