On the occasion of LGBT pride month, we have written this article to celebrate the work of some contemporary artists who, through their art, represent and fight for the rights and visibility of the community.

1. Zanele Muholi (1972)

Zanele Muholi is an activist photographer from South Africa. Her work focuses on making visible lesbian women and transexual men, whose existence in Africa is not only rejected, it is practically denied and described as non-existent by society. That is why Muholi has worked for more than 10 years to create a photographic archive of portraits where the identities and expressions of these people are recorded and celebrated so that their presence is not ignored by future historians.

2. TM Davy (1980)

TM Davy, born in Brooklyn, New York, is a pastel and gouche artist who is known for portraying homosexual couples in a light of sensitivity and tenderness. His work allows the viewer to appreciate relationships between men through a lens of intimacy and proposes a new form of masculinity that is celebrated with an unusual palette of pastel colors.

3. Hilary Harkness (1971)

Hilary Harkness, an American painter, rewrites the history of humanity through her paintings with the inclusion of homosexual or queer characters. In an interview for Artsy, the artist commented that “even though the media is increasingly telling the stories of the LGBT+ community (romantic and otherwise), I feel like I still find myself extrapolating from centuries of heteronormative art and history.” She is currently working on a series about the US Civil War in which she portrays interracial lesbian couples.

4. Hernan Bas (1978)

Unlike the other artists on this list, Hernan Bas does not seek to portray relationships so much as moments of discovery of people's very identity, particularly during adolescence. Although his characters are not necessarily queer, his scenarios are, and they invite the viewer to reflect on those moments of loneliness and confusion in their lives and on how many LGBT people deal with it when discovering their own sexuality.

5. Patricia Cronin (1963)

A multifaceted artist, she has worked with multiple techniques and materials ranging from bronze sculptures, illustration, painting and marble sculpture, and her themes fall mainly on feminism and lesbian relationships. Some of her works are projections of her personal life, and her most acclaimed work “Memorial to a Marriage” is a sculpture for the Bronx New York cemetery in which she and her wife appear intertwined in a bed, with a style inspired by 19th century marble sculptures.

With information of Artsy, Google Arts & Culture and Canvas Conception Arts.