Not Your Mother's Catholic Frescoes: Radiant Portraits OfQueer People Of Color

Photographer Gabriel Garcia Roman's "Queer Icons" series portrays queer people of color as saintsand warriors. Jahmal Golden is a poet and a student at The New School.

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

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Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Photographer Gabriel Garcia Roman's "Queer Icons" series portrays queer people of color as saintsand warriors. Jahmal Golden is a poet and a student at The New School.

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Photographer Gabriel Garcia Roman's portraits feature friends and acquaintances, activists andpoets, Americans and immigrants -- some naturalized, some undocumented.

All of them are queer people of color.

"I wanted to specifically focus on this community because queer and trans people of color are sorarely represented in the art world," says Roman, who is Mexican-American and also identifies asqueer.

Kathy Rodriguez lives in Brooklyn and works for the educational organization New Visions for PublicSchools.

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

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Kathy Rodriguez lives in Brooklyn and works for the educational organization New Visions for PublicSchools.

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

The photo series, called "Queer Icons," evokes the colorful, religious artwork that Roman grew upwith. "Because I grew up Catholic in a Mexican community in Chicago, my first introduction to artwas religious art," he says.

He was particularly inspired by the fresco paintings of haloed saints that decorated the walls of his

neighborhood church. "I've always thought of the halo as something very powerful -- it's like a badgeof nobility," he says.

And because Roman's subjects are activists and artists who do good for the community, "I wanted torepresent them as saints," he says.

He also wanted to capture their pride and their strength. "I wanted them to be warriors -- that's whya lot of them are looking straight at the camera, saying 'Here I am, and I'm not going to hide.'"

Some of the images feature poems orprose, written by the subject of theportraits. Roman uses the silkscreenprinting method to layer text andphotograph with color and pattern.

He has shown this work at severalexhibits around the country. As ofnow, he works on the project in hisfree time -- he works at a marketresearch firm by day.

Like many of the people he hasphotographed, Roman, 41, says heoften grapples with his identity. Hemoved with his family from Zacatecas,Mexico to the US when he was twoyears old, and they wereundocumented until he was 15. "Igrew up in the states always beingreminded that I was Mexican," hesays. "When I finally went to Mexicofor the first time, when I was 31,everyone there was like 'You're notMexican -- you're American.'"

These images play with feelings of not belonging, and, above all, being seen.

Sonia Guiñansaca

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

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Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Sonia Guiñansaca

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Sonia Guiñansaca is an undocumented poet and community organizer who was born in Ecuador andhas been raised in Harlem since age five. She is a board member at NYSYLC, a non-profitorganization that advocates for the rights of undocumented youth.

Today you were reminded that you are not "queer" enough, not "artistic" enough, not "migrant"enough...

Today you cry. Today you write. Today you make love to your queer partner.

Today, all femmed out you disrupt the gaze. Today you love and not just survive!

Emanuel Xavier

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

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Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Emanuel Xavier

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Emanuel Xavier is an award-winning poet and LGBT rights activist of Ecuadorian and Puerto Ricanheritage, based in New York. He's also chair of the Penguin Random House LGBT Network.

There is a world out there where I belong: loved by a mother and father who understand my dreamswho listen to my fears of my older cousin, his touch, or how boys make fun of me in school. There isa world out there where I can grow up to love myself and others like me, where soft spoken boys canspeak boldly. I will call it poetry, each memory an inspiration. All this pain, these dismemberedabandoned cars, these empty lots left behind where I knew deep in my heart there is innocence inplaying with dolls, reaching for rainbows, book, even mami's pretty dresses. I will not be alone inthis world. I have somewhere to run. I do not know exactly where. I have no maps or stars to guideme through the night. If it turns out this is my world, maybe I should simply learn to laugh and loveand let the others catch up to me instead. - "Runaway"

Julissa Rodriguez

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

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Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Julissa Rodriguez

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Julissa Rodriguez is a poet and tattoo artist from the Bronx, NY. Her family is from the DominicanRepublic.

Bakar Wilson

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

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Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Bakar Wilson

Courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Roman

Bakar Wilson is a poet and an adjunct professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan CommunityCollege.

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/28/409770203/not-your-mothers-catholic-frescoes-radiant-portraits-of-queer-people-of-color?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart