LATV’s Champions of Queer Authenticity in Art

This Pride month, LATV is proud to present our Top 20 list of influential people championing queer authenticity. Over the course of the month, we will be featuring five artists, five entrepreneurs, five media personalities, and five community leaders who are changing the narrative around queerness in culture today.

Our first category: ART!

Author Alok Menon explores the acceptance of queer love in their writing. Visual artist and painter Marcel Alcalá examines the cross between their queer and Latinx identities on canvas. Actor Adam Faison breathes his real-life experience into queer characters on camera. Hip hop artist Loco Ninja embraces queer sexiness through lyricism and expression. And folklorico dancer Arturo Magaña adds a queer narrative to the traditionally heteronormative custom.

ALOK MENON / through words

Writer and queer visionary Alok Menon captures the feelings of a queer generation. Their work explores the danger of love—loving yourself and loving others. They suggest that if you already fear affection and love, the acceptance of queer love is ultimately impossible. What withholds us from choosing acceptance, and ultimately joy, is the fear of losing it. Guided by this fear, we remain unhealed in silos. Overcoming that fear, for Menon, is linked to our commonality of pain as a human species. To feel love and welcome pain connects you to others, to their pain. And this is how they describe beauty: neither sadness nor happiness, but that fleeting sense of “being” among others in a shared preciousness. And noticing it.

As for expressing queerness, Menon is known for their boldness on paper and on camera. Being statement-worthy, for them, is a requirement for artistry. Their 2020 book, Beyond the Gender Binary, is becoming a shelf staple in queer literature.

MARCEL ALCALA / through images

Marcel Alcalá’s paintings examine the intersection of their queer and Mexican-American identities. Raised “between the border” in Santa Ana, California, and in their parents’ Mexican pueblito, they learned early on how to adapt identity to fit community.

“I’ve always connected to the idea of queerness as a broad term for my experience, because to be queer is to be othered and non-heteronormative,” they say on LATV’s docuseries Más Que Pride.

Their pieces explore sexuality, gender identity, expression, and nudity. In his piece, “Lorena St. Corner Store,” a shirtless man in a skirt crosses a border. In “Carnitas,” a shark circles around a headless nude torso. In “Out of Body,” a black-and-white figure levitates above the colorful, expressive version of that figure on the ground. What is queerness without queer expression? Alcalá’s work, steeped in vibrant color and a dark thoughtfulness, is meant to capture their own queer existence on canvas: artifacts of our current times.

ADAM FAISON / through acting

Up-and-coming actor Adam Faison has brought his queerness to camera through an array of roles over the last few years. In the Freeform TV series, Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, we meet him in the first scene as “Alex” on a first date with series creator and actor Josh Thomas. Over the course of the show, the characters comically figure out they love each other, question gay stereotypes, and even get intimate on screen. In the 2022 adaptation of the film, Hellraiser, Faison portrays “Colin,” another queer character on camera, but this time in a universe – unlike Everything’s Gonna Be Okay — that doesn’t pin gay themes in the logline.

In his roles across genres, Faison creates queer characters that ostensibly shed light on different parts of his own experience—making them grounded, authentic, and captivating to watch. Not all queer actors play queer roles, and not all queer roles are played by queer actors. Faison — a queer actor who plays queer characters — is using his identity in part to make his imprint in the changing Hollywood landscape.

LOCO NINJA / through music

Per Instagram, Loco Ninja is a “king, kween, and everything in between.” The hip hop artist and beauty influencer is adding a queer voice to a historically hyper-masculine genre of music, not only in their lyrics but also through public expression. In their music video, “France,” Loco Ninja struts across the floor in a vibrant pink outfit. The single’s album art showcases queer lust. And in the lyrics, set to a more traditional hip-hop beat, they call themselves a “kitty.” Their artistry playfully dances between the masculine and the feminine, and, more importantly, celebrates and normalizes queer sexiness. The music industry has set the tone for beauty for so long, both lyrically and visually. Loco Ninja is redefining how it’s measured.

ARTURO MAGAÑA / through dance

Dancer Arturo Magaña had always been involved in the arts in México. After immigrating to the United States and losing a sense of cultural belonging, they joined a folklorico group to fill that gap. Like many traditional dance genres, folklorico typically tells heteronormative stories on stage, and Magaña was cast in roles like “the father” or “the groom.”

“Though I was representing Mexico, my heritage and my culture, I still felt that I was not representing my [full] identity,” Magaña tells KION46 News.

So, in 2015, Magaña founded a LGBTQ+ folklorico group. The company takes the stage dressed in vibrant skirts (regardless of gender) and rhythmically taps their shoes to the strums of classical guitar. Where men dance with men, women with women, Magaña and the company actively add queer stories to a centuries-old artform.

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Next week, stay tuned for the next phase of the list featuring queer media personalities. For more Pride content, check out LATV queer on the LATV+ app!