This photograph stages a deliberate rupture between childhood innocence and adult corporeal reality within Sierra's signature abject environments. The adult male body—evidenced by visible leg hair and mature physique—merges with plastic childhood toys against an overwhelming bubblegum pink backdrop, creating visual dissonance that interrogates nostalgia, identity formation, and the violence of gendered expectations. The translucent pink storage container becomes both pedestal and cage, while vintage toys (reminiscent of 1990s Colombian childhood) suggest frozen moments of play now inhabited by an adult consciousness. Sierra positions himself as "subject of aesthetic creation," using the homoerotic gaze to reclaim and recontextualize the trappings of boyhood within queer adult experience. The title "Un niño en el Chicle" (A Child in Bubblegum) evokes being stuck—trapped in sweetness, suspended between identities, contained within societal expectations of what childhood "should" mean.
Jose Sierra work is deeply influenced by themes of self-representation and a homoerotic gaze. Through his unique aesthetic, he creates abject staged environments that challenge traditional norms. His art often merges personal identity with broader cultural commentary, as seen in his notable works like "Anti-Personnel Grids" and "Self-Portrait." Sierra's pieces are a bold fusion of urban art and intimate self-exploration, reflecting his dynamic engagement with contemporary culture.
Adult body photography confronts childhood artifacts in pink staged environment—exploring identity rupture, queer nostalgia and the violence of gendered expectations. Archival pigment print from Un niño en el Chicle series. Available at The Art Design Project, Miami Beach.
Childhood Nostalgia Photography - #21 From Un niño en el Chicle Series, 2021
#21, 2021
From #20 From Un niño en el Chicle Series
Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle paper
Limited Edition.
Signed by the artist
Unframed
Jose Sierra (b. 1991 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia) obtained his Master in Fine Arts from the University Institute of Fine Arts and Science of Bolivar (UNIBAC) in 2012 with a body of work titled Anti-Personnel Grids, which has since exhibited in different locales of Colombia. Shortly after, he was commissioned by the Colombian Ministry of Culture alongside the artist collective Si Nos Pagan Boys to participate in an urban art exposition titled, La Muerte Se Va de Vacaciones (Death is Going on Vacation) that was executed as a reaction to the traditionalism of Cartagena. In 2014, he exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Cartagena and in La Presentacion Casa Museo Arte y Cultura. He then exhibited in the Cultural Center Ciudad Movil in 2016 with a body of work created in collaboration with the Colombian photographer, Camo. In the same year, he was nominated for the International Luxembourg Art Prize for his recent work Self-Portrait. Sierra’s ongoing body of work continues to be based around his self-representation from which he addresses a homoerotic gaze through the configuration of abject staged environments that he merges himself within as “a subject of aesthetic creation.”
