Miss D’vine II (2007), © Zanele Muholi. Image from British Journal of Photography. Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg, and Yancey Richardson, New York.
In contemporary art, representation is not only about visibility. It is also a form of memory, a way to question inherited stories and to make space for bodies, identities, and experiences that were left outside official history for too long.
For Pride Month, at ArteGlobaL we bring together three names whose artistic practice inspires us and who we believe are essential: Sojourner Truth Parsons, Zanele Muholi, and Covey Gong. Through painting, photography, and installation, their works show how art can shape the intimate, protect shared memories, and change the way we read bodies, materials, and identities.
Sojourner Truth Parsons: between the mind, daily life, and emotion.
Sojourner Truth Parsons, The Woman of My Dreams I, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 45.7 × 30.5 cm. Image courtesy of Esther Schipper Gallery.
The paintings of Sojourner Truth Parsons work with scenes placed between daily life and imagination. Hauser & Wirth describes her works as personal and fictional moments, shaped by the wish to bring the mind and emotion into visual language.
Her compositions include bodies, plants, animals, city spaces, and other images linked to everyday life. These elements help build atmospheres full of emotion, color, and memory.
Pilar Corrias highlights her use of strong colors, flat spaces, textures, and bright tones, as well as the link between inner and outer worlds. This way of working makes her paintings especially powerful in contemporary art. They invite us to stop and look at small details, feelings, and moments that could otherwise go unnoticed.
Zanele Muholi: photography, visual activism, and archive
Julie I. Parktown, Johannesburg. 2016 © Zanele Muholi. Courtesy of the artist, Stevenson, and Yancey Richardson. Source: British Journal of Photography.
Zanele Muholi is one of the most important figures in contemporary photography linked to the representation of Black LGBTQIA+ communities. Tate Modern notes that Muholi defines themself as a visual activist and that, since the early 2000s, they have documented and celebrated the lives of Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer, and intersex people in South Africa.
Their work is not limited to portraiture: it builds memory. In series such as Faces and Phases, Muholi has created a strong visual archive, both beautiful and political. It focuses on the dignity, presence, and complexity of people who have long faced violence, discrimination, and erasure.
The National Gallery of Art also includes Muholi among important LGBTQ+ artists, highlighting the use of photography as a tool to defend and celebrate queer communities. Their practice reminds us that an image can be visually powerful and urgent at the same time, and that representation can become a form of care, resistance, and recognition.
Covey Gong: objects, memory, and transformation
Covey Gong, installation view in Greater New York 2026, MoMA PS1, New York. Photo: Kris Graves. Source: MoMA PS1.
Covey Gong’s practice stands between sculpture, installation, and a careful study of materials. According to Derosia, Gong works with the stories and histories that materials gather over time, through use and through contact with different contexts.
His work explores the tension between how materials look and how they behave. Something fragile may seem solid, something rigid may become flexible, and something light may take on an unexpectedly heavy presence. Through this focus on change, Gong offers a contemporary way of reading objects. They are not neutral things, but carriers of links, uses, memories, and cultural meanings.
In this unstable space between form, material, and meaning, his work offers a way of looking that questions what seems obvious.
Why these practices matter today?
Parsons, Muholi, and Gong work with different languages, but they share a contemporary sensitivity toward what is not always seen at first: emotional memory, the building of identity, the history of bodies, and the symbolic weight of materials. Their works expand the stories of art today without being reduced to only one reading.
In the context of Pride Month, this selection invites us to think about diversity not as a separate category, but as a cultural force that runs through contemporary creation. For collectors, galleries, and art lovers, following these careers helps us better understand where the art conversation is moving: toward practices that are more open, critical, and connected to the values of our time.
Supporting and buying works by LGBTQ+ artists can also be a way to preserve the cultural memory of the present and to build private or corporate collections with a more open, aware, and representative view. But doing this with care requires more than instinct. It means studying careers, contexts, institutional relevance, and specific markets.
At ArteGlobaL, we support this process through international consulting, guiding each purchase with a view that brings together cultural value, collection coherence, and strong patrimonial value.
Collecting can also be a statement
If you want to buy contemporary art with an informed, open, and lasting view, our team can guide you at every step of the process.
- Request a free advice session with our experts.
- Or, if you prefer to get inspired first, explore our carefully selected works and discover exceptional pieces that will bring value and distinction to your patrimony.
