Devotion is not passive. It is the obsession that pulls you back to the studio. The love that restructures your entire way of seeing. The offering placed on the altar without any guarantee of return.
Devoted: Queer Love and Other Offerings is an online exhibition curated by writer and visual artist Mario Elías, bringing together international Queer artists working across painting, photography, drawing, collage, and mixed media. Timed to run through Pride 2026, the exhibition asks a singular, urgent question: what does it mean for Queer artists to place their work — their identity, their soul — in full and unapologetic view?
The visual and written offerings trace devotion in its many forms: erotic and sacred, communal and solitary, inherited and invented. A curated playlist with songs selected by each artist, accompanies the exhibition — giving the work a living, sonic dimension that extends beyond the image.
Devoted is not an archive of Queer love. It is an act of it.
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Ash Beachey
Forgo my pint, My clubbing, I’ll miss
Pencil on Paper
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Ash Beachey
The Doubting Nylon Coat
Pencil on Paper -
Lucas P. Boyle
A Friend of Consequence
Photograph -
Lucas P. Boyle
Enjoyer
Photograph
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Lucas P. Boyle
Summit
Photograph -
Mario Elias
Self-Portrait as Dora Maar-The Weeping Woman-by Pablo Picasso 1937
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Mario Elias
Self-Portrait as Mario Minnitti in Boy with a Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio 1593
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Mario Elias
Self-Portrait as Elizabeth Siddal as Ophelia by John Everett Millais 1852
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Zach Grear
Acts of Service
Marker on paper collage -
Zach Grear
Invocation
Marker on paper collage -
Zach Grear
Subvert
Marker on paper collage -
Luiza Isalu
Ribbons n Flair_Devotion
Mixed Media on canvas
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Meet the Artists
Ash Beachey is an artist based in Manchester, UK. They trained as an artist at the University of Brighton. Their work, which includes both painting and drawing, concerns figurative study, storytelling and folk.
Lucas P. Boyle (he/him) is a Cleveland-based artist working in photography, jewelry metals enameling, and alternative print media. His practice examines the surrogacy of the phone, desire, yearning and comfort through the meticulous reproduction of image based craft. @lucaspb
Mario Elias (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist of Cuban and Syrian descent based in Chicago. His work spans fiction, nonfiction, photography, painting, and printmaking, often exploring themes of identity, memory, and cultural inheritance. His book Queering the Male Gaze reimagined masterpieces of the classical and modern canon through essays and self-portraiture, giving voice to the often-overlooked queer and female figures who shaped them. His visual work has been featured in Vogue, San Francisco Magazine, and Dazed, among others. His portrait collection, Perennial Beauty, was the inaugural show for Golden Gate University's Social Impact Artist Series. He is the founder of The KindaSuper Project, a philanthropic initiative offering free photography and video services to underserved communities. His debut novel Beloved Disciples was published May 12th, 2026 by Amble Press. @kindasupermario
Zach Grear (he/him) is a writer and self-taught artist based in Brooklyn. He attended San Francisco State University and graduated with a BA in Creative Writing. In 2010 he moved to New York City and in 2018 quit his full-time job to pursue his art practice. His work focuses on gay erotic imagery inspired by the gay porn he shoplifted as a teen. The hand drawn tattoo line work he draws is a way to directly inscribe his own beauty standard onto the featured bodies. These alterations join vibrant floral collage backgrounds to exalt gay sex into a deified realm. His art has been featured in EE72 magazine, the Oslo Erotic Film & Art Festival, The AIDS Memorial T-Shirt, and LaMama Galleria among others. @zachgrear
IsaLu Ishii is an Italian language and literature graduate from Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria, with a background in interpretation and translation. After several years working in the field, she moved to the beautiful Renaissance city of Florence, where she lived for five years. She currently works in mixed media, with a focus on the male body as a central subject. Her work explores muscled, powerful figures that often reveal a contrasting tenderness and flamboyant charm, playing with ideas of strength, vulnerability, and allure. What you see is what you see - no hidden messages to be found!! @isalu_ishii
Kee Mabin (they/them) – formerly alkebuluan ‘kee’ merriweather – is a collagist working within archives,sound, printmaking, ephemera, and mixed media. Kee is the founder behind projects such as Black Matriarch Archive @homagetoblkmadonnas (now acquired by Black Beauty Archives) and @crunkmusicarchive (an ongoing collaboration with Georgia State University/Atlanta Hip Hop Archives),and an archive based off the June
Jordan poem by the same title.@poem.for.my.love . -
From the Permanent Collection
