Artists: Grzegorz Pieniak (Poland), Stuart Sandford (United Kingdom), Daniel Torrent (Spain), David Jester (USA), Anuwat Apimukmongkon (Thailand), Juliusz Lewandowski (Poland), Doug Blanchard (USA), Fe Maidel (Brazil), Zaida Gonzalez (Chile).

Dissident Affections: Sexual Diversity in Contemporary Art was presented in June 2023, during Pride Month, at the Memorial da América Latina in São Paulo, Brazil. The exhibition drew on works from The Queer Museum’s collection and was organised in collaboration with the International Center for Diversity Culture (CICD), the Secretary of Culture and Creative Economy of the Government of the State of São Paulo, and Diversa. Following its initial presentation in São Paulo, the exhibition travelled to other cities in the state during 2023 and 2024.

Curated by Cheo González, the exhibition brought together artists from a range of national and cultural contexts, including Brazil, Poland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Spain and the United States. The selection presented contemporary LGBTQIA+ artistic practice through different visual languages, experiences and social realities, offering a comparative view of queer art across multiple geographies.

The exhibition was shaped by the idea that art has often provided a means of expression for experiences that could not easily be articulated in public life. Within queer history in particular, artistic practice has served not only as a vehicle for visibility, but also as a space in which coded forms, emotional registers and indirect languages have been developed in response to religious, political and social repression. In this context, Dissident Affections explored how contemporary artists continue to engage questions of sexuality, desire, identity and representation through diverse formal and cultural approaches.

By bringing these works together, the exhibition offered the public an opportunity to encounter contemporary queer artistic production within a structured curatorial context. It presented a cross-section of current artistic practice while also drawing attention to the different narratives, visual codes and forms of self-representation through which LGBTQIA+ lives and cultures continue to be expressed.