5 Queer Artists From the Artnet Gallery Network to Celebrate This Pride Month
By Artnet Gallery Network
Pride month is a reminder that queer artists have always been here—shaping culture, expanding what art can say and do, and refusing easy categories. The five artists gathered here, all found on the Artnet Gallery Network, reflect the full range of what it means to be a queer artist working today. For some, identity is central to the work—the subject, the frame. For others, queerness is more subliminal, one thread in a richer weave. And some simply make extraordinary work that defies any single label. Together, they underscore that queer art and artists are impossible to reduce. And these are just a few of the hundreds of artists that can be found on the Artnet Gallery Network, both during Pride month and all year round.
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William Gedney, Benares (1969-1970). Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York.
American documentary and street photographer William Gedney (1932–1989) is best known for his poignant image series of rural Kentucky, San Francisco, India, and New York, which he executed in the 1960s and 1970s. An incredibly private figure, in part due to the need to hide his homosexuality for personal and professional reasons, he remained largely unknown during his lifetime, although he garnered the attention of many of his contemporaries, including Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander. It was Friedlander who inherited his archive after his death, and through her efforts, his work achieved wider recognition.
Julie Mehretu, Six Bardos: Transmigration (2018). Courtesy of Cynthia Drennon Fine Arts, Inc., Encino.
Contemporary painter Julie Mehretu (b. 1970) is widely celebrated for her large-scale, densely layered abstract works that integrate elements of architectural drawing, maps, historical imagery, and emotive, gestural markmaking. Originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and raised in part in the United States, her practice explores history, human migration, geopolitics, and collective memory, and employs abstraction as a tool to reflect the chaotic and nuanced—and often contradictory—facets of the contemporary world. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and International Medal of Arts, her work can be found in major museum collections worldwide.
Martine Gutierrez, Queer Rage, Growing Up Bites, p66 from Indigenous Woman (2018). Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
American artist Martine Gutierrez (b. 1989), also referred to by the moniker Martine, maintains a wide-ranging practice that engages with photography, performance, video, and sculpture. Tapping the fields of fashion, advertising, and pop culture, her work explores ideas around identity, beauty, and politics of representation. One of her best-known works is her self-published and -produced artist’s book Indigenous Woman (2018), wherein she acted as photographer, stylist, model, art director, and subject to interrogate the various ways Indigenous, queer, and trans people are represented and regarded.
Michela Griffo, Emily Dickinson (2024). Courtesy of Stellarhighway, Brooklyn.
Artist and activist Michela Griffo (b. 1949) came of age in 1950s New York, where she is still based today, and was a founding member of the Radicalesbians, Lavender Menace, and the Gay Liberation Front, situating her at the forefront of the Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and Gay Rights movements of the 20th century. Working across painting, drawing, and photography, her practice is informed and influenced by her deep involvement with activism. While periods of her artistic career have been overshadowed by her advocacy work, a new generation of audiences today has taken note of her visual practice, which has also drawn institutional recognition.
Nan Goldin, Drag Queens, Berlin (1993). Courtesy of Atlas Gallery, London.
Considered one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, Nan Goldin (b. 1953) is most well known for her 1985 multimedia work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. The project—comprised of more than 700 personal photographs documenting the gritty underground scene of New York City in the 1970s and ’80s and the people that made up her inner circle—taps into themes of intimacy, sex, love, abuse, and addiction from a deeply personal and candid perspective. Her practice is marked by a distinct diaristic quality, resulting in images that have traced everything from the AIDS crisis and opioid epidemic to private and intimate moments.
Explore these artists and more on the Artnet Gallery Network.
This article was originally published by Artnet News.