The landscape for queer contemporary art is incredibly rich right now, largely thanks to pioneering figures who have boldly centered both their personal journeys and the broader histories of their communities. The queer community has always led the way in intergenerational building, establishing support networks rooted in economies of mutual care and respect. This structure is highly visible within the art world. New generations look to those who paved the way, paying tribute to the practices that secured many of the freedoms we hold today.
Crucially, many artists who have achieved major institutional success remain deeply committed to championing queer artists—whether they are younger generations, their own students, or peers who haven’t yet received the same level of recognition. But who inspires these leading figures?
In the face of rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights, particularly those of trans people, affecting communities around the world right now, the role of queer art and culture feels ever more essential. It offers a crucial space for identification and community building, giving people a place to share their perspectives and make sense of their own identity in all its complexity. As Pride Month 2026 begins, Artsy spoke to three pioneers—Catherine Opie, Zanele Muholi, and Julie Mehretu—about the queer artists making vital new work that inspires them today.
Picked by: Julie Mehretu
B. 1970, Addis Ababa. Lives and works in New York.
Inside Totality (what the mouth cannot hold), 2025-2026
Julie Mehretu
Marian Goodman Gallery
Julie Mehretu is a globally celebrated artist whose monumental paintings map the socio-political realities of our time, exploring complex themes of identity, geography, and migration. Beyond her studio practice, she is a co-founder of Denniston Hill, a residency program and cultural platform in the Catskill Mountains established alongside visual artist Paul Pfeiffer and architectural historian Lawrence Chua.
For this feature, Mehretu has selected three New York–based artists working across sound, performance, sculpture, and painting. For these artists, queerness manifests in abstract, conceptual, and coded ways—it’s a unique perspective that informs their relationship to space and material.
Jesús Hilario-Reyes
Downward Tracery, 2025
Jesús Hilario-Reyes
Jack Barrett
“Jesús is a cross-disciplinary queer artist making sculptural and performance works that blur the boundaries of sculpture, sound, and expanded cinema. Their recent metallic structures channel the ecstatic and fractured energies of rave culture. They ask how Black embodiment can move through systems of representation while still holding onto eroticism and joy.”
Sojourner Truth Parsons
Kissing a writer, 2026
Sojourner Truth Parsons
Esther Schipper
A broken heart I, 2026
Sojourner Truth Parsons
Esther Schipper
“Sojourner Truth Parsons is an abstract painter with a sublime and deftly evolved rigorous logic of their own. Their paintings move with a restless, sensuous intelligence…as queer and charged as painting can be.”
Covey Gong
“Covey Gong is a queer conceptual artist whose sculptural practice asks us to rethink the cultural and symbolic lives of materials. One of the standout voices from the recent “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1, their work feels sharply analytical and strangely intimate.”
Picked by: Catherine Opie
B. 1961, Sandusky, Ohio. Lives and works in Los Angeles.
Skeeter, 1993
Catherine Opie
Lehmann Maupin
Catherine Opie’s photography, which bridges art historically inspired portraiture and landscape, has fundamentally shifted the representation of queer lives within visual art, inspiring generations of younger makers. Alongside her studio practice, Opie has dedicated the last two decades to teaching. She was a tenured professor at UCLA and has contributed to numerous other learning environments, including a Summer Salon at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which she co-taught with writer and curator Helen Molesworth in 2024. For this feature, Opie selected three artists she encountered at the Summer Salon whose practices left a lasting mark on her.
Paul Burnham Schwartz
“Paul’s images and his publication moved me with his nod to generational politics, and his understanding of the AIDS crisis was inspiring to see and talk about.”
Michelle Schapiro
“I met Michelle at a recent workshop in P-town and was taken with the honesty and humanity in her work. She recently was accepted into an MFA program and is someone to watch.”
Leah DeVun
“The last is Leah DeVun for her body of work “Resemblance,” which features her queer family and the relationship of trans love in raising a family together.”
Picked by: Zanele Muholi
B. 1972, Umlazi, South Africa. Lives and works in Johannesburg.
Jamiel, Laumont Trinting, Queens, NY, 2019
Zanele Muholi
Hamburg Kennedy Contemporary
Zanele Muholi gained global recognition with their “Faces and Phases” series, documenting queer and trans people initially in South Africa, and subsequently around the world as they took the project on tour to photograph local communities. Identifying as a visual activist, Muholi has dedicated their life to enacting change through art.
For this piece, the 53-year-old artist chose to highlight practitioners from their own generation who rarely receive mainstream features but deserve recognition nonetheless. Muholi is passionate about the fact that older artists often risk not being celebrated until after their deaths, while younger artists still have time to play and be seen. Their three selected artists are all key figures in the LGBTQ+ community: mothers, sisters, and relatives to queer and trans people whom Muholi describes as “visual social workers,” using photography to document, validate, and memorialize queer lives.
Laura Charmain Carrol
“Charmain is a queer mother with a 30-year-old queer daughter, and they have a beautiful story to share. She is one of the most important artists creating awareness and visibility through her visual activism.”
Lizzie Muholi
“My own sister has done so much for queer people: as a mother, a grandmother, and a soccer coach. She is the first Black woman to document the Catholic Church in our township. She does incredible work for our community, through her photography and far beyond.”
Lindeka Qampi
Nomadlakadlak (Old clothes), 2017
Lindeka Gloria Qampi
Erdmann Contemporary
“In my opinion, Lindeka has done the most for our community in South Africa. She has documented the lives of queer people through it all—from weddings and protests to crime scenes and funerals. Her archive is bigger than my own, but she isn’t as noisy as I am, so I want to make noise on her behalf and help her get the recognition she deserves.”
