A Night of Color and Struggle: Celebrating Puerto Rican Queer Culture

Posted at 2:49 PM Jul 01, 2008

On Tuesdays, Charlie Vazquez writes Gotham After Dark, a peek into what goes on in Manhattan's queer nightlife, with club and event reports and profiles of fascinating New Yorkers.

I was thrilled to hear that The Organization of Puerto Rican Artists, Inc. (O.P. Art) was convening last Thursday at The Clemente Soto-Vélez Cultural Center in The Lower East Side, to salute Puerto Rican culture’s many living gay, lesbian and queer photographers, artists and writers. The cavernous exhibition space was adorned with erotic and abstract paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture and audio-visual installations focused on the gay, lesbian and queer Puerto Rican struggle for identity and equality, whether in San Juan or San Francisco. O.P. Art’s president Luis Carle got loud applause for staging such a fascinating event.

Erotic photographer Peter Madero’s imaginative work caught my eye (that's his image above). His photographs spanned from the mythological to documentarian, exhibiting sadomasochistic and sometimes playful sexual themes and subjects—all of which were finished with a Hispanic varnish of fine photography. This difficult balance between what is commonly and erroneously downplayed as “pornography” and what is heralded as “fine art” was executed effortlessly by this extremely talented erotic art-photographer. Another noteworthy artist was Jose Luis Cortes, whose unabashed mixed-media salutations to smut and fetishistic desire were instantly arousing and brimming with taboo.

The evening also served as a publication party for Los otros cuerpos, an anthology of gay, lesbian and queer Puerto Rican literature—including its diasporas. Sexual identity, homophobia and erotic tension were the underscoring themes, with nine of the contributors reading their essays, poetry, short stories and novel fragments. Some, like the fierce and biting Robert Vázquez-Pacheco were dark-skinned and read in English. The mesmerizing academic Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and the serpentine Frances Negrón-Muntaner were light-skinned and read in Spanish, exemplifying the diversity of both Puerto Rican culture and the combative, erotic art that has sprung out of its closet to challenge a long history of fevered homophobia.

Charlie Vazquez is a Brooklyn-based writer, part-time fetish clown and the assistant to Diamanda Galás--but really, he's nice.

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