Contemporary LGBTQIA+ Artists to Check Out

The LGBTQIA+ is a beautiful and diverse community filled with incredibly talented people across all artistic mediums. This article seeks to recognize and appreciate the contributions to the art world made by these modern LGBTQIA+ artists.

This article uses terminology, such as the term queer, that, up until recent times, was used in a harmful way to shame people who didn’t prescribe to the heteronormative. The term queer, originally meaning “odd” or “different”, has since been reclaimed by the LGBTQIA+ community as an umbrella term for all members of the community and is a marker of pride. Please bear in mind that all uses of the term in this article are attributed to artists who use and identify with the word queer.

With that being said, here are four LGBTQIA+ contemporary artists making a splash in the art world:

Hetty Douglas

Hailing from across the pond, this UK artist creates incredible abstract paintings and uses her art to depict her observations on society. She takes her inspiration from urban decay. Hetty resides in London and uses her art to explore deep and intense emotions with themes relating to sexuality and mental health. Her works are very emotionally fueled and feature ‘mistakes’ or ‘corrections’ which are used as a commentary on society as well as biographical purposes.

You can find Hetty on Instagram or on her website.

Fabian Guerrero

Fabian is a Los Angeles based American artist who works in the medium of photography. His work documents brown queer culture and his images capture a beautiful intersectionality between his experience growing up Mexican-American, as well as exploring queer narratives as portrayed in his ‘Rancheros’ photo series depicting his experience growing up in Tamaulipas and Dallas as a queer person of colour.

You can find Fabian on Instagram, his website, or on Tumblr.

Laurence Philomène

Laurence is a non-binary trans Canadian artist based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). Working in the medium of photography, Laurence explores their lived experiences as a trans person suffering from chronic illness. They recently released their first photo book in May of 2022, titled ‘Puberty’, which documents their experience undergoing Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) treatment over a period of two years. Their work has appeared in Vogue Italia, The New Yorker, and Washington Post, among other notable publications.

You can find Laurence on Instagram, their website, or on Twitter.

Christina Quarles

Christina is an American artist based in Los Angeles. Her paintings are highly illusory and explore her lived experience as a Queer cis-woman born to bi-racial parents. From March to September of 2023, you can find her solo exhibit ‘Collapsed Time’ on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin, Germany, as well as a group exhibition titled ‘Brave New World’, running from January to June 2023 at the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, Netherlands.

You can find Christina on Instagram, or on her website.

Was an artist you like featured here? If not, let us know in the comments about your favourite LGBTQIA+ contemporary artists!