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Pink Smoke and Rainbow Stairs

I had not imagined the pink triangle, so ubiquitous in the visual politicking of LGBTQ liberation movements, as a powerful volcano until recently, when I saw Esvin Alarcón Lam’s sequence of graduated paintings of queer mountains belching lavender and magenta smoke under sweetly chromatic skies. Completed in various sizes, these almost comically abstract compositions propose the enduring symbol of gay oppression and empowerment as a container of chthonic energy—a site of violent potentiality and beatific imaginings. These and the other works in the exhibition …