The irresistible perversion of Fabian Chairez's work 

A native of Chiapas, Mexico, the young artist studied fine arts at university and showed signs of a successful career early on. Particularly striking is his unrepentant representation of his culture using heavy symbolism.
 
Cháirez's art focuses on the male body from a queer angle, using Mexican archetypes of virility. With his subversive imagery, he aims to convey a message of tolerance and openness in a traditional Mexican society. He depicts icons of Mexican or Central American heritage such as wrestlers, gang members, or Mexican cavaliers. Set in a suggestive and provocative manner. The artist is also inspired by the heavy religious imprint in his country, and thus exploits a lot of religious symbolism in his art.
 
This powerful symbolism and bright colors erotically represented is a powerful vision, and one cannot stay unaffected by his proposition. You get excited by the social and cultural revolution it prompts. So much so, that in 2019, when portraying revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, Cháirez started quite a polemic. He was censored at the famous Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City in response to a violent protest by members of a rural movement.
 
In the current Mexican landscape, Chairez's paintings are truly rebellious. By taking traditional references and transposing them to the contemporary, as well as repurposing the symbolism and imagery of Mexican nationalism and figures of worship. All in an erotica and campy ambiance. The work is quite alluring in its cynical commentary about the society it depicts - iconoclastic by definition.
 
Exploring the male anatomy, and a revision of some patriotic or religious icons with eroticized and feminized portrayals. Cháirez has, through the years, become a prevalent symbol of LGBTQ+ diversity and movement in Mexico.
 
His oil paintings are full of provocation, paradoxes, and irony; all of which are expressed in a queer spirit, in a manner that raises pertinent questions in a still very conservative country.

Images courtesy of Fabián Cháirez