BRANDIN BARÓN

San Francisco, CA | brandinbaron.com

As a child, I had no obvious visual references for alternative embodiments of queerness; my own identity was created in response to caricatures of gay/bisexual men from film and television, that I knew were inauthentic. As an adult artist, I'm interested in creating artworks that amplifies the diversity of LGBTQIA+ personae, especially in highlighting the beauty and glamour of these individuals.

I insert LGBTQIA+ bodies into fictive environments composited from historical imagery to emphasize parallels with our contemporary sociopolitical issues, and to link queerness to a historical past. My portraits have the intention of making complex relationships between the viewer and the subject, in which there is a healthy ambiguity surrounding “artist intent”. The "glamour" of the sitters in my artworks is heavily reliant on their individual strengths and their relationship to the greater LGBTQIA+ community: in this case — San Francisco Bay Area drag queen legend Sister Roma works tirelessly to promote LGBTQIA+ issues.