Content Warning: Some sections of this article explore difficult or emotional topics connected to queer history, identity, and activism, and may include imagery or language some readers find sensitive.
Queer Media & Art
What’s shaping it, what shaped it, what’s still unfolding
Queer culture and art have been passed among the LGBTQ+ community for decades. As it’s shared, it is also being created.
Queer history & art can be hard to track. Some of it was never meant to last, some of it wasn’t preserved properly, and some of it is still being made in real time. So this isn’t a definitive list. It’s a mix of older work that still holds weight, and newer voices that are building something of their own.
Music
Not everything is labeled, and not everything needs to be. A lot of these artists aren’t making “queer music,” they’re just making music that exists from a queer perspective.
-
Janelle Monáe – Dirty Computer
A bold, futuristic concept album that celebrates individuality and resistance, Dirty Computer centers on queer identity, especially the Black female queer experience, through themes of liberation, sexuality, and defiance against societal norms.
-
Omar Apollo – God Said No
A raw and emotionally charged project that leans further into alternative R&B and dreamy pop textures, God Said No explores heartbreak, longing, and identity through Omar Apollo’s intimate songwriting, balancing sensuality with the ache of unrequited love and personal growth.
-
Destin Conrad – Love on Digital
A sleek, emotionally layered R&B album that explores love, desire, and connection in the digital age, Love on Digital weaves in queer intimacy and vulnerability, centering Black queer experiences with honesty, sensuality, and modern romantic tension.
-
SOPHIE – Oil Of Every Pearls Un-Insides
A groundbreaking electronic album that pushes the boundaries of pop and sound design, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides channels themes of transformation, fluidity, and trans identity, celebrating the beauty and complexity of becoming while remaining electrifying and bright.
-
Ethel Cain – Preacher’s Daughter
A haunting, cinematic album that blends gothic Americana with a deeply personal narrative, Preacher’s Daughter explores religious trauma, repression, and longing, unraveling a tragic story shaped by identity, desire, and escape while facing the limitations that life has dealt you.
Local Artist Spotlight
-
Julianna Zachariou – Dreamer Dreamer
San Diego singer-songwriter Julianna Zachariou joined us as a model for this year's Pride campaign alongside her wife, making her a natural addition to our Arts & Culture roundup. Her latest album, Dreamer Dreamer, showcases her warm indie-folk songwriting and reflective storytelling.
Her 2022 release Hero of Your Heart included a tender meditation on identity and perception. The song "(S)he" examines the space between who we are and who others expect us to be. Even beyond a queer reading, the song resonates as a universal reflection on authenticity, acceptance, and the courage it takes to be seen as your full self.
Movies
These are the ones that didn’t just represent queer life, they shifted how it could be seen.
-
Paris Is Burning (1991)
A record of ballroom culture in New York. It documents chosen family, performance, and survival, but also exposes the realities underneath it all, race, class, and vulnerability.
-
Off An Age (2022)
A tender coming-of-age romance set in 1990s Australia, Of an Age follows a young Serbian immigrant who forms a deep, unexpected connection with his ballroom dance partner’s older brother over the course of a single day. The film beautifully captures fleeting love, identity, and the quiet intensity of queer self-discovery.
-
Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Based on a true story, Boys Don’t Cry tells the tragic life of Brandon Teena, a transgender man navigating love and identity in a hostile environment. The film is both a powerful love story and a heartbreaking exploration of violence, prejudice, and the struggle to live authentically.
-
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newman (1995)
This vibrant road-trip comedy follows three drag queens who embark on a cross-country journey and end up transforming a small town along the way. Filled with humor, heart, and fabulous performances, the film celebrates self-expression, chosen family, and the power of kindness and acceptance.
-
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
A poetic and unconventional road movie, My Own Private Idaho follows two young hustlers navigating friendship, survival, and identity on the streets and open highways of the American West. Through dreamlike storytelling, the film explores queer love, loneliness, and the search for belonging in a world that often feels transient and uncertain.
-
Elisa & Marcela (2019)
Based on a true story, Elisa & Marcela follows two women in early 1900s Spain who defied social convention to become one of the first same-sex couples to marry. Shot in striking black and white, the film explores love, sacrifice, and the lengths people have gone throughout history to live authentically.
Books
Books are some of the oldest forms of storytelling that we have, they are also our greatest teachers of history. Fact or fiction, these are some of our favorites.
-
Giovanni's Room – James Baldwin
A story about desire, denial, and the fear of being seen too clearly. It doesn’t offer resolution, just the weight of choices and what happens when you avoid them.
-
Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
Moves between past and present, examining family, secrecy, and identity. The format itself mirrors memory, layered, and sometimes incomplete.
-
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong
Written as a letter, it blends queerness with immigration, language, and generational trauma. Intimate to the point of feeling intrusive.
-
Stone Butch Blues – Leslie Feinberg
A look at gender nonconformity, labor, and community. It captures both violence and care without separating the two.
-
Detransition, Baby – Torrey Peters
Complicated relationships, messy decisions, and questions around gender that don’t have clean answers. Modern, specific, and intentionally uncomfortable at times.
TV Shows (Current, Cult-Favorite & Foundational)
Queer television used to exist in fragments. Side characters, coded storylines, moments that slipped past censors. Over time, those stories became harder to erase. Some of these series quietly changed what audiences were allowed to see. Others pushed representation somewhere entirely new.
- Heated Rivalry – Based on the novel by Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry follows the secret, years-long relationship between two rival NHL players navigating fame, masculinity, and desire within the hypermasculine world of professional sports. This was easily one of our favorite character-building moments and in general, one of the best relationship stories of the last year!
- Pose – Set within New York’s ballroom scene during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Pose centers Black and Latino queer and trans communities creating family, artistry, and survival during the AIDS crisis. Lavish and deeply human, the series balances celebration with the realities of the time underneath it all.
- The L Word – Focused on a close-knit group of lesbian and bisexual women in L.A., The L Word became a cultural landmark for queer women who rarely saw themselves reflected onscreen. Messy, dramatic, and deeply influential, the series opened conversations around identity, friendship, and chosen family.
- Queer as Folk (1999) – One of the first television dramas to center gay lives unapologetically, Queer as Folk followed a group of queer friends navigating relationships, nightlife, family, and visibility. Bold for its time and even now, but the series helped push queer stories into the center of mainstream television.
- Orange Is the New Black – An ensemble drama that expanded queer representation beyond a single storyline, Orange Is the New Black explored race, gender, class, and sexuality through a wide range of LGBTQ+ characters. The series gave trans and queer women visibility on a scale television rarely had before, becoming one of the first cultural phenomena of the streaming era.
Art
Some work doesn’t leave you. Even if you don’t know the name, you recognize the feeling.
-
Keith Haring – Silence = Death
Being diagnosed with AIDS in 1988, Keith Haring spent the last two years of his life creating as much art as he could. During that time, his work largely revolved around a sense of urgency to spread awareness about the AIDS crisis and the U.S. government's neglectful treatment of AIDS victims. Our founder Rosemary, had the chance to view an exhibit of Haring's work in 2023, describing it as highly emotional.
-
David Wojnarowicz – Untitled (Buffaloes)
This photo is of a Diorama at the Smithsonian Museum Of National History in Washington, D.C. depicting a buffalo hunt where the animals are herded to the edge of the cliff, plummeting to their deaths. This is thought to represent Wojnarowicz and others like him during the AIDS epidemic, being neglected by the Government, and effectively pushed to their own demise.
-
Felix Gonzalez-Torres – Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)
A pile of candy, roughly weighing about 175lbs, the average weight of an adult male, was placed on the gallery floor. Viewers are then invited to take pieces of candy, slowly diminishing in weight. Again, this goes back to the AIDS crisis, which both the artist, and their partner that the piece is dedicated to, succumbed to.
-
Catherine Opie – Self-Portrait/Cutting
A bit graphic to some, Self-Portrait/Cutting depicts Opie, the photographer and subject, from behind with a childlike carving in her back. Still bleeding, it's like Opie herself becomes the canvas and her pain becomes the paint. The carving itself shows a lesbian couple outside a home, not dissimilar to artworks many of us did as children, often depicting the mom and dad of the nuclear family that we often associate with normalcy. This work directly holds the tender innocence of childhood up against the violent pain of adulthood.
Current Exhibitions
- Q+ Art – Palm Springs, CA – “Q+ Art at Palm Springs Art Museum champions the often-underrecognized contributions of LGBTQ+ artists. Founded in 2023, the initiative is the only program of its kind dedicated to queer art and artists from within a general art museum.”
Activists (Current & Ongoing)
The work isn’t finished. These are people actively shaping what support, visibility, and protection look like right now.
-
Raquel Willis
Focused on Black trans liberation, policy, and community-led change. -
Alok Vaid-Menon
Uses fashion, writing, and public speaking to challenge gender norms and expand how identity is understood. -
Chase Strangio
Works with the ACLU on trans rights, particularly around healthcare and legal protections. -
George M. Johnson
Author and activist known for discussions around Black queer identity and masculinity. -
Tourmaline
Activist, filmmaker, and historian preserving Black trans histories and liberation movements.
There’s no clean timeline for any of this.
Older works will continue to resurface while new work builds on the old or pushes against it. Some things get more visible, while others stay under the surface but still matter just as much.
It’s all connected.
Same as everything else, It keeps moving.