This year's
Seville Gay Pride poster celebrates the 40th anniversary of the first rally for
equality in Andalusia. Artist Ángel Pantoja has designed a gay choreography of sorts in which all march and dance
with joy, celebrating love and the happiness of living. For once in an iconic
work of art produced in Andalusia, no crying virgins, or crucified men in a
valley of sorrows, but men and women on a bucolic green prairie indulging in
sensuality and freedom, as a means of diminishing the anguish and loneliness
that many homosexual men and women have suffered since their childhood. Pantoja's
intention is to provide an antidote to sadness and pain. Baroque classicism on
a background inspired by Wedgwood china, designed for the viewer to enjoy
finding hidden icons: a closet opened by David Bowie's lightening bolt; a
dragonfly ejected towards a Space Oddity admired by a Pink Narcissus frolicking
on the Chapina gardens; Hercules and Julius
Cesar on the Alameda columns; Carmen, the tobacco worker, attending
a dance with lesbians, and 90s local queen Capi dancing with his extravagant
fan trying to refresh the air in the hot skies of a Poseidón Club full of
astronauts and unicorns. Plus Rainbow
flags, elephants, Roman soldiers, the peace symbol, and our much-cherished Teddy Bear. This camp poster celebrates freedom in
all its forms and is a call to all gays and lesbians not to become indifferent
to the fight still ahead or to let their guard down. HAPPY PRIDE. cmg
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