Teal Sparkes Art @tealsparkes-blog - Tumblr Blog

I snatched my boyfriend be jealous x

She awakens.

Recharging.

The real me x

Body image in the gay community is such a vast and dark subject for the most part, being a man who is attracted to men can be a very depressing existence when you do not fit into the stereotypical definition of what is attractive, you find yourself comparing your looks to those of others 90% of the time and you can’t find someone attractive without being almost resentful of their appearance, especially when the other man in question is also gay. This situation is also not helped by the medias portrayal of gay men which is more often than not, hyper masculine, white, muscly men, which is, in turn, to do with making gay people more digestible to straight audiences, this also feeds into the idea of masculinity being more desirable within the gay community leave feminine men like myself left outcast and looked down upon amongst gay peers even though throughout lgbt history it has been the feminine men, trans women, and drag queens who have fought hard for our rights and been put at the front of the civil rights movement and then are repaid by being seen as “belittling the gay community” and making the masculine gay men “look bad”. This concept all comes back to the deep-rooted toxic masculinity in our society and has left gay men around the world feeling worthless, not good enough, and most commonly ugly.

#queer #lgbt #gay #bodyimage

Reveal and Conceal

For this project on “reveal and conceal” I began with looking at a subject which I can closely relate to, homosexuality. I feel like this closely related to the title of reveal and conceal because of the long history of lgbt people keeping their true identities hidden due to the sad world we live in which prohibits people from being who they truly are, not just lgbt people but people in all walks of life feel at one point or another that they have to conform and fit in, which is something personally I have tried and very much failed to do in my life. I am glad to say I think we are living in a world that is changing for the better, just 5 years ago I used to be treated as some sort of anomaly for being gay, not necessarily out of malice but out of ignorance and it joys me to say that the feeling of alienation has lessened, not completely gone but has certainly become less apparent. I wanted to this project to mainly focus on queer art and how it depicts the struggles of lgbt people throughout history and in the modern day, for the main part I have focused on the art of drag, I feel that this above all is one of the most important queer art forms as it is truly represents self/gender expression and allows people to transform into something that brings them into a new world of confidence and self-love, even if it is just for a night. Drag as an art form is incredibly important to queer history because it is one of the only art forms created by and for queer people, and plays an enormous roll in the civil rights movement from the Stonewall riots to being front runners at every pride festival all around the world.

#queer #stonewall #reveal #conceal

In the past queer people were persecuted not just by the law but by society also, within the last 50 years since being gay was decriminalized the world has changed for the better and I attribute that to the rapid advance in technology, the world changes when it needs too and with the invention of the internet has forced many people to change their outlook on life and has educated them into thinking in a more open-minded way. This is what I wanted to represent with this diptych of a 60’s mannequin in contrast to a modern-day android. On the surface this seems to show how the world is changing and how technology has advanced however reading deeper, I wanted this to represent the ever changing views of modern day people and how technology has ironically made us more human, empathy and compassion has become incredibly more apparent over the last few years due to the internet allowing us to hear and see more about the world around us, which in both ways has made the world better but also made it seem worse as we are now able to dissect all of the overarching issues in society which have been ignored for centuries, not just within the queer space but with race relations and the western world’s condemning of the third world and how our way of life is destroying others. That being said I do believe that we are heading in a different direction with our outlook on life, whether it be for the good or bad things are certainly changing, as they always do.

#queer #60s #robot