thezletnis (she/her)(Toronto, Ontario) - Am and Noey are queer sisters who have captivated diverse audiences through their content focused on self-expression, inclusive fashion, and LGBTQ+ advocacy on TikTok. Their mission is to foster a community where everyone is encouraged to embrace their true selves and celebrate the beauty and power of authenticity. My understanding is that there are no gay men who paint their nails; I would be ignorant to the extent that I know this. In a nutshell, it is a way of saying “Yep, that’s right, I’m a cool dude.” The procedure is less invasive and less permanent than piercings, and it can be avoided before a prospective employer’s next interview. In the past, there was a ban on nail varnish for people in the upper classes, regardless of gender. Women painted their nails to indicate their cleanliness around the turn of the century in France. In the 1930s, companies such as Revlon marketed red and pink nail polish directly to female customers. On a purely aesthetic level, nail polish does not work well for men. Fixed a bug where vertically thin selections were difficult or impossible to drag (despite showing a

A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. The Huldufólk are the spirits of nature in Iceland: They coexist with the landscape and are neither good nor evil. They are at once feared, but also revered as protectors of nature. In creating these images, I was interested in exploring the combination of fear and high esteem Icelandic folks hold toward the Huldufólk, and how those same themes can be applied to a trans body. Similarly, much like a body undergoing hormonal changes, Iceland itself is always shifting: from bright sun to heavy winds in the same hour, to tectonic plates crashing against one another, economic crashes, and roads being built on hundred-year-old moss fields.verygaypaint(he/they) (Los Angeles, CA) - Nicholas Scheppard and Jenson Titus are comedians-turned-painters and the duo behind Very Gay Paint, a muralist company centered around their own queerness and colorful designs. From comedic skits to vibrant mural artwork, they entertain and inspire their community while emphasizing their own queerness and colorful designs. Despite my best efforts, I am still perplexed as to why it doesn’t work. In my high school, there were some gothy/drama boys and a few grunge guys who wore nail polish. It’s not as serious as it sounds. octopusslover8(he/him)(Los Angeles, CA) - Comedian and content creator Jake Shane became known for his PSAs and reimaginings of significant historical events through the eyes of Gen Z. He uses his platform to share light-hearted videos, while opening up raw conversations about mental health and sharing his own experience and journey with treatment for severe OCD and anxiety, which he has struggled with since the age of 7. The piece I selected for my self-portrait is a silicon body cast of my chest being pierced with iron oxidized nails. It is also bound to rebar wires that become ornamental elements of beauty, yet function as a material used to reinforce my body. I am fusing the organic with the industrial as signifiers of transformation and of the self-inflicted violence and modifications my body endures while maintaining its structural capacity to perform. This piece is a part of a larger series of works entitled “Antithesis,” which investigates discourses pertaining to gender identity, identity politics, technology, body dysmorphia, bio-politics, and many other topics that echoe the structure of society. We're also set to host a series of IRL event moments to celebrate and honor our LGBTQIA+ community in person. Over the coming weeks, we're hosting the next installment of our Visionary Voices Salon series along with our first-ever TikTok Pride Creator Ball celebration in Los Angeles.

We knew pretty early on that this thing was going really fast and in a lot of different directions,” Jenson said. “So we wanted to hook our skills onto this, which are being hosts, performers, comedians, and writers. I wanted to make sure we didn’t just get known as painters, so we put up videos and tried to integrate the comedy into it.” This isn’t a mindset I like to have, but I often think that making self-portraits is my twisted way to claim authorship over my image and not be misattributed. I’ve experienced being mistaken for someone before, and a friend has been mistaken for me, and that happens in different ways. I’ve had parts of my artist statement used to describe another queer Chinese photographer in a magazine. It might sound silly, but given the frequency of these experiences throughout my life, it’s less silly to me. Ultimately, I just want to say, “I was here, this is my work, and it may have done something for you.” All windows now have a default-focused control, and the last focused control in the window is rememberedThe access key of an item is the underlined letter, or the first letter of the item's text if there's no And if your date has a problem with the color of your genitals after getting close enough to see them, it probably wasn't going to work out anyway. For artists, self-portraiture can be a powerful act of self-reflection. In making themselves the focus of their work, the artist reveals and expresses elements of their identity, on their own terms. They determine gesture, form, light, color, and the inclusion or exclusion of body parts; what we see is something that the artist sees within themselves, an assertion of selfhood and visibility. “It’s a power shift from being defined to defining yourself,” said artist Alannah Farrell. “A reclaiming of identity.” So much representation in media has been so intense,” Jenson said. “Gay films are always very intense, like about AIDS, or there’s Queer Eye. But you don’t get to see this down-to-earth view of gay people poking fun of themselves.”

After completing an in-home project for a client that worked for the Santa Monica Pier, Nicholas and Jenson say they were commissioned to create a full-fledged exterior paint mural in honor of Pride Month. “It was our first project on concrete ground,” Nicholas says. “Pride Month is about celebrating a community that has experienced so much darkness,” Nicholas says. “It’s a reminder that we’re resilient yet joyous as we protest the work that still needs to be done.” The flourishing of gay life in the 1970s soon gave way to the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s. “The whole decade was like a nightmare,” Leslie recalled with a shudder. “We were endlessly at bedsides and memorials and cremations. You’re always with friends trying to do something and you can’t do anything. Three people died in our house.” Everything closed down: the baths, the bars. Even the gallery had to close: “No one came anymore,” Leslie said; artists stopped bringing work. “It was such a pall over the city.” Still, it was during this decade, in 1987, that Leslie and Lohman created their nonprofit foundation, which was accredited as a museum in 2016. Pride means being anti-racist; it means fighting for all humans’ safety and equal rights, all genders and sexualities, and not stopping until we achieve that. I think it’s a lifetime commitment to doing that work.

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hal.baddie(she/her)(New York, NY) - Devin Halbal is a social media icon, known for her off-the-cuff phrases, like “ Met Gala behavior,” and for spreading positivity through her lifestyle content, her travel journey and daily mantra videos on TikTok. She hopes to inspire other transgender women to have adventures and live their lives to the fullest. The end result is a vibrant mural marked by crisp geometric shapes that the pair managed to complete in just one week. “This felt like more of a Bauhaus-inspired riff on the typical gay rainbow,” Nicholas explains. Von Gloeden offers even further proof that gay art is by no means a new phenomenon, just one that has only recently been permitted to see the light. Now, Leslie wants to liberate us from our own puritanism, hatred, and fear. “I just want to tell people they should relax about male imagery and not be so horrified all the time,” he said. “People are nuts.” Historical precedents for queer art renders this priggishness especially odd. “The measure of art education used to be the life class,” he explained. “Now, that’s no longer true. Now, you put a garbage lid on the floor and put cotton balls in it, and that’s high art.” The self-portraits I make are a way to release my imperfect parts: humorous, rebellious, bold, self-deprecating, disrespectful, and facing uncomfortable truths head-on. I will be the first to admit that I’m a very flawed human. I used to have mixed feelings about self-portraits, but now I’m beginning to think everyone should make them. It’s a power shift from being defined to defining yourself, a reclaiming of identity. And I see parallels with how society is finally awakening to gender and sexuality. It’s not up to society and its many biases to define us. We, as individuals, should define ourselves. In many ways, Very Gay Paint is a long-form, drawn-out comedy sketch that Scheppard and Titus have committed to so hard that the muralist characters they’ve developed and play are now actual, real-life muralists. However, they’re clear that these characters are still very much just characters, and always will be.