Since the beginning of his career, Gonzalo Orquín has always placed the lgbtqa+ cause at the centre of his work, and focused his attention on contemporary heroes, martyrs and fighters who are proudly gay in countries where being homosexual is still rejected, oppressed, and even sometimes punished with the death penalty.

His 2014 photography project, Sì, quiero, which depicted same sex couples kissing in front of Catholic churches in Rome, provoked a huge uproar worldwide, even attracting an official warning from the Vatican to expose the work.

From the beginning of May until the end of July, the artist Gonzalo Orquín made a residency at Village.Berlin as part of the instinct Berlin Residency Program. The works produced during this period as well as a selection of previous paintings and drawings will be presented during the exhibition ‘fighting, loving, dreaming: my Berlin diaries’.

Alongside a series of works featuring fighting people and war scenes inspired by The Disasters of War by Goya and presenting the cruelty of mutilated bodies of people fighting for their ideas, Orquín presents us a shattering painting made in memory of Hande Kader, a transgender Turkish woman politically active for the lgtbqa right in her country, killed at just 23 years old as an example.

The violence of the pictures projects us in the lives of the subjects, lifes ended in tragedy, following powerful, disruptive acts in difficult social contexts and situations of scarce human rights. The images are taken from mass media sources, photos which we see and quickly forget. Orquín don’t give any chance to escape: the public will see and feel the pain.

In the Berlin part of his project, the vision changes. Orquín combines portraits and images of an intimate and gentle daily life. Desire and eroticism transpire not only as a source of pleasure, but also as an affirmation of freedom and identity. Its reveals the fragility and the fictional aspect of homo/hetero normativities and the paradox of the privilege to live in a free country.

The faces and bodies of masterful beauty, created with the charm of a timeless figurative kind of painting, which is one of the Sevillian artist’s trademarks.