The House of Illustration is marking the centenary of the birth gay cultural icon Tom of Finland (born Touko Laaksonen) with the UK”s first public Exhibition dedicated to his work
Called Tom of Finland : Love and Liberation it will celebrate the artist whose unique aesthetic and homoerotic visions had a profound impact on the likes of Queen and the Village People – despite living and working in a country where both homosexuality and pornography were illegal.
It will feature iconic, previously unseen drawings from Tom of Finland Foundation’s collection – unabashed tributes to gay sexuality and identity which continue to have an outsize influence today.
Tom of Finland: Love and Liberation https://www.houseofillustration.org.uk/ 6 Mar to 21 Jun 2020 2 Granary Square, King's Cross, London, N1C 4BH
Meanwhile over at the Barbican Art Gallery they are mounting their much anticipated exhibit Masculinities: Liberation through Photography. Through the medium of film and photography, this major exhibition will consider how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day.
Examining depictions of masculinity from behind the lens, the Barbican brings together the work of over 50 international artists, photographers and filmmakers including Laurie Anderson, Sunil Gupta, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Isaac Julien and Catherine Opie.
In the wake of #MeToo the image of masculinity has come into sharper focus, with ideas of toxic and fragile masculinity permeating today’s society. This exhibition charts the often complex and sometimes contradictory representations of masculinities, and how they have developed and evolved over time. Touching on themes including power, patriarchy, queer identity, female perceptions of men, hypermasculine stereotypes, tenderness and the family, the exhibition shows how central photography and film have been to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture.
Masculinities Liberation through Photography Thu 20 Feb—Sun 17 May 2020 https://www.barbican.org.uk/
