"Images of Ambientetraces 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".
Images of Ambiente: Homotexuality and Latin American Art 1810 - Today
by Rudi C.Bleys, Ph.D. Art Historian,Author
Antwerp, Belgium
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.
"Federico Correa ... ..produces paintings that are inscribed within the great Spanish Traditions of Goya and Roman Catholic sensibility . The emotional flamboyance and intensity of his work are a reflection , so that he admits, of his own guilt-ridden attiude regarding his sexual identity. His vivid , yet ambivilent images of either carnivalesque or morbid , good or evil, strike a universal chord while at the same time testifying to the artist's Latino cultural heritage. "
" Homosexuality recurrently comes to the surface , if only as a narrative enclosed within more philosophical investigation of human existance. The male body , flaunting a huge erection , while lying on top of a birthday cake (Birthday Cake, 1988), is a signifier of both the family dogma 's grip, and the gay man's desire to escape from it. The body's severed limbs and the penis' reddened appearance are visual icons of homosexuality's stigma. The image, says Correa, "is soaked in [the] hypocrisy [of] Catholicism and family tradition . It is thickly coated with subdued violence , destruction and cruelty...all in the name of love!"
Rudi C. Bleys
"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. "
"The gay cultures of Latin America expressed themselves in a variety of ways artistically, from the early 19th century to the present. "Images of Ambiente" traces the development of such art and reflects the backlash against gay American influences."
