Nico Fuentes

Art-making is a visual channel that functions to critically excavate deeper social and political issues by evoking emotion or interest from the viewer. I investigate rural queer life through relishing and teasing out the tension between mother lover and mother/lover. My work offers a place to imagine possibilities that do not yet exist. Using visual poetics and text, I am inspired to poke holes in the airless sack of convention, letting it drain out to make breathing room. I work to create space, asserting queerness in place-making, subversion of sacred rituals, and empowerment through pleasure. 

My studio philosophy is a triad of thoughtful research, conversation, and experimentation. I engage in a creative practice of photography and object making. My art is informed by historic saintly and queer iconographies. I use analog photographic processes, objects, and text to explore intricacies of forged kinship as a radical site of transformation, power, and joy. 

Visual cadence and rhythm mirror the embodiment of domestic intimacy as a site of trauma, safety, and revolution. Sinister and sacred rituals of quotidian care are imagined and interpreted through dreamy and cheeky pairings. I pair found and made images, text, and objects to engage the viewer about pseudo-maternal queer experience and desire. From my work at an Appalachian rape crisis center and my own queer subjectivity, I seek to make art and engage in dialogue around the nuances of feminine destruction and creation through modes of care.