“let’s say Juliet had dropped deeply in love with her cousin Rosalind in place of with Romeo?” says the musician Enrique Agudo during our phone conversation from his house in Los Angeles. We’re talking about their movie The Pantheon of Queer Mythology, a seven-minute digital truth movie that made its digital globe premiere in the 2020 Tribeca movie Festival, despite the . Agudo, an architect by training and“fashion that is self-described,” set off to produce a global where he could explore his very own identification along with their artistic passions.

Led by four queer deities, each representing one or lots of the unearthed battles attacking the community—expectations of masculinity, human anatomy dysmorphia, sex identification, racial imbalance, and transphobia inside the Queer community—the audience roams this site through various globes and experiences prompted by the artist’s own experiences on Grindr and Scruff, therefore the individuals around him, like their friend and muse Gracie Cartier. “We get really comfortable when we’re in a position to hold arms walking across the street or we’re capable of getting hitched,” claims Agudo. “I view it essential that people bring these tales into the forefront making sure that people can empathize with your communities. To make certain that gay men that are white uphold trans individuals of color into the combat them perhaps maybe not being massacred regarding the roads or just obtaining a task.”

The Pantheon of Queer Mythology aims not just to produce unity and give vocals to your issues impacting queers every day, but Agudo additionally hopes to move the narrative during the core of queer tales. In their globe, there isn’t any space to concern the effectiveness of the queer journey. Alternatively, Agudo invites watchers to see and explore his pantheon. Below, the artist describes the inspirations behind the deities, from John Galliano to Grindr’s headless torsos and their very own plumped for household.

CHAPTER 1: AGORETZ

“I’m obsessed with Francis Bacon. I’ve a tattoo of their. I favor figurative painting, in which he represents great deal of this items that I adore about any of it. He utilized distortion in order to talk about their very own feeling of loss inside the identification and self search and he would punish himself through paintings as a result of their own feeling of internalized homophobia, versus when he was at love in which he would paint their lovers. The partnership of just exactly how he saw the world and exactly how he saw their enthusiasts through their artwork informs a tale about conflict, self-discovery, resurgence, and empathy towards oneself. Dozens of things which I’m really thinking about. Graphically, i usually thought it will be something similar to their paintings. Demonstrably I’m a gay man residing in Los Angeles and so the apps have become much element of the way I have set, find love, continue times, and also socialize. Sometimes the apps will get the very best of us and then we become enthusiastic about getting validation from a particular person. I desired to demonstrate how our very own perception of ourselves may be suffering from the way in which we communicate with other people through these apps. We thought, “What does Scruff or Grinder appear to be as room, and just what does it appear to be whenever you look over every one of these pages?” into the final end, you arrived at this creature that is an object of the imagination which have a cock that is bigger than everyone else whom you’ve ever seen before along with his human anatomy is perfect—it’s like a body-horror type of that which you attempted to find.”

CHAPTER 2: IYYANNA AND ALSO THE THIRD GENDER

“ we really had a little bit of an activity with all the concept of presenting gender non-binary individuals in a means that could’ve been regarded as drag, because obviously gender presentation and sex identification will vary things. To convey sex non-binary in method which is not vocal or that’s just artistic, you would need to present something which is either fem-looking or masc-looking, and I also didn’t wish to get for the reason that direction. We started evaluating Daniel Lismore. They types of do drag however they give consideration to by themselves only work of art. They go out your house with a remarkably beautifully curated number of things as a way to show the artwork that they’re personifying that day. It’s the type of creature this is certainly underlying into the fashion industry on a regular basis, nonetheless it’s a small bit obscure. Similar to Amanda Lepore perhaps three decades ago. Throughout your life, from a teddy bear when you were a child to that photo that you had on the fridge growing up, to a spoon that was oddly bent in your family kitchen, all those little things that in a way tell the story of your life without you being in it, would that be more revealing of who you are if you were to gather all the objects that have been important to you? I like the notion of presenting sex in a fashion that is not only a binary as well as in a method doesn’t address gender at really all. It simply addresses identification. Lyle XOX, that is a amazing artist, makes use of everyday things to carry out this sort of gender performance. I used lots of my personal personal memories to state this deity because it is additionally an instrument for me personally to dismantle the perception that We have of myself, because I’ve always been 200 pounds and big and masculine looking, so lots of people make presumptions of whom i will be. I’m much more feminine than We be seemingly, and I’m much more sensitive and painful than I look like. I happened to be checking out my sense that is own of, you might say.”