Pink Loerie Magazine 22nd Special Edition Volume 1

Nel Gallery in Cape Town takes as a pivotal part of its mission the creation of a platform for LGBTQIAO+ individuals, debate, and culture. We exhibit and promote queer artists, creating opportunities for them to enhance their careers, highlight issues within our community, empower the voices of those who have been silenced because of their identity, orientation or life choices, and we also contribute to not for profit organizations benefiting at risk LGBTQIAO+ individuals. For example we created a platform for Pride Shelter to highlight the trust’s work and homeless LGBTQIAO+ people that they deal with daily.

The Pride Shelter is the only one of its kind in Africa. Currently people fleeing severe discrimination and trauma from various other provinces and countries, flock to this single shelter—which can only house a limited number of people. Nel Gallery created the visual arts component for “Pride Afrique”, the very first Pan-African pride event that started in 2020. The theme in 2021 focused on trauma and the slow violence committed against LGBTQIAO+ individuals and communities throughout Africa. This year we are proud to partner with Pink Loerie.

Nel Gallery’s programme of exhibitions and performances reflects our aim of being inclusive of various voices and multiple issues, paying attention to the intertextual nature any such exploration often has. No one case is ever the same as another. Our approach aspires to be broad enough to accommodate many issues and views. We were never given a handbook and are learning each day, cutting a path forward, by the group exhibitions we show, by the solos we host—expanding the discourse one show at a time.

An artist that we represent and believe in, is Philip Steele. Steele depicts erotic film stars, who have passed away, in the finest hand-applied washes of ink. The artist makes us aware of the tragedy, and untimeliness of their deaths, in the red text painted on each painting. Their passing is tied to their living life on the edge of society. Existing in that shadow space that occupies gay men’s imagination and fantasies.

The sensitive treatment of each individual portrait suggests a tenderness—a treatment of the subject that is unexpected. Instead of using images that might display these men as their best erotic selves, the artist treats each portrait with individual care, as if he knew them, and with the dignity usually reserved for more mainstream celebrity.

Steele took on the role of a private investigator, or an obsessed fan. He says: “I asked myself: How does their work live on? What is their legacy? I began to empathise with these individuals. For some people these actors meant so much, and their deaths were met with great sadness. Others believed these actors were deserving of a premature death because of the way they lived their lives. This body of work has taught me just how lethal prejudice can be. My work uses painting to memorialise and beatify (the second stage in canonising saints) male erotic film actors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries who were gay or did gay erotic scenes. These martyrs, for me and many other gay men before me, represent beauty, positive affirmation of gay desire, and the celebration of that desire. How it could be played out and acted upon unashamedly. I truly hope that my gesture offers them the tribute they deserve.”

18