Sierra's project of painting his body as tribute to pre-Columbian cultures, documenting the performance in photographs that deliberately position him in erotic and suggestive poses. The work challenges dominant narratives that separate Indigenous cultural heritage from contemporary sexuality, particularly queer sexuality. By applying body paint referencing pre-Columbian aesthetic traditions and then photographing himself in poses coded as homoerotic, Sierra insists that these cultural legacies belong to all Colombians—including queer Colombians, including those who refuse respectability politics in claiming that heritage. The performance becomes archaeological in reverse: rather than excavating the past, Sierra embodies it through his present queer body, suggesting that Indigenous traditions of body decoration, ritual performance, and aesthetic transformation never required colonial Christian sexual morality to be "authentic" or "respectful."
Body Paint tribute to the Afro and pre-Columbian cultures, taking erotic and suggestive poses such as reading among others.
Pre-Columbian body painting combined with erotic performance—Indigenous cultural heritage claimed through contemporary queer body and homoerotic self-representation. Nude photography documentation. Available at The Art Design Project, Miami Beach.
Erotic Body Painting Photography - Untitled II, 2016 by Jose Sierra
Untitled II, 2016
From The Series Sin Titulo
Archival Pigment Print
Limited Edition
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.”
