SEX CRIMES
2019-09-16The exhibition “Sex Crimes” provides artwork and literature with homosexual content that was often created in a shadow world of criminality, organized crime payoffs, and under the threat of arrest. These pieces, aimed primarily at gay men, were often passed surreptitiously from person to person. Producers of the artworks faced imprisonment and harassment if they were caught.
The body of work presented in “Sex Crimes” provides a window into the camaraderie and defiant response of sexual outlaws to governmental, religious, and cultural homophobia that has historically criminalized them. Until the Stonewall riots in 1969, gay people had not collectively organized in resistance to repression and discrimination. And it was not until 2003 in Lawrence vs. Texas that the US Supreme Court finally ruled that nonremunerative sex between consenting adults in private was protected by the Constitution and could not be criminalized.
Opposite – Laura Rubin, “Mario Montez”, 1969/printed 1975
Exhibition runs through to September 28th, 2019
ClampArt
247 West 29th Street, Ground Floor
New York
10001 NY