Portrayals of Queer Love for Pride 2020

For the last 50 years, Pride, a global celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, has traditionally been marked by marches, festivals, and cultural events around the world. This year, the majority of those events will be canceled, postponed, or reimagined online. As the queer community explores alternative means of expression to mark Pride 2020, Artsy launches a new collection of artworks that express queer love, accompanied by an editorial feature on 14 of the featured artists.

Artsy’s curatorial director Gemma Rolls-Bentley brings together works that explore queer love in its many crucial iterations: from romantic love and desire, to self-love, to the love that bonds queer friendships, families, and communities. These artworks serve a critical role in providing points of reference, identification, and inspiration for both the queer community and society at large. They also advocate for change: Pride was born out of demand for equal rights that queer communities still fight for around the world. 

The collection features contemporary artists who challenge the dominant heteronormativity of art history. Works range from fresh-from-the-studio paintings by Matthew Stone and Gisela McDaniel to iconic photographs by Isaac Julian and Catherine Opie, who created pioneering depictions of queer love in the 1980s and ’90s. When asked about the importance of portraying queer love, Opie explained, “If we don’t show those acts of expression, how will future kids who want to come out see and have a visual culture of that? Expressing love boldly and publicly is exactly what happens in heterosexual society, so why should we be voiceless in that? Love is love.”