Join the Lehman College Art Gallery at an opening for the exhibition that will be on view at the Lehman College Art Gallery from Valentine's day through April 28.

Queer Love: Affection and Romance in Contemporary Art presents paintings and photographs that illuminate both individual and universal stories of vulnerability, tenderness, and desire in the LGBTQIA community.

The exhibition, which gathers the work of almost 50 artists, opens in two New York City galleries in February 2023−Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx from February 14 to April 23 and La MaMa Galleria in Downtown Manhattan, from February 18 to April 6. Each venue offers works that explore the power and significance of intimate queer familial, romantic, and sexual relationships.

From cheerful, romantic expressions of love to depictions of non-traditional nuclear families, the artwork of these LGBTQIA artists highlights the bond between them as art creators, and those with whom they have the closest ties. The LGBTQIA artists often move from celebrating their love to proclaiming a place for queer people within a larger society. Lushly beautiful, their art creates a series of nuanced and reflective, but largely positive narratives, and love’s transformative impact on both the human experience and the artistic process.

Lehman College proudly presents world-renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni. In advance of the College’s opening of James Baldwin’s “The Amen Corner,” she will speak about Baldwin and beyond and share her newest poetry.

In his book Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke 2017), guest lecturer Dr. Alex E. Chávez of the University of Notre Dame, explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the sounds and aural poetics of huapango arribeño, a musical genre originating from north-central Mexico. In this presentation, he draws on this work to address how Mexican migrants voice desires of recognition and connection through performance, and the politics such desires attain amidst the transnational context of migrant deportability.

This event is cosponsored by the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies; the Department of Music, Multimedia, Theatre, and Dance; the Mexican Studies Institute; and the Leonard Lief Library. The book discussion will be preceded at 11:00am by a lecture/recital by Dr. Chávez entitled “Huapango Arribeño: Aural Poetics of North-Central Mexico.”