Aug 20, 2018
Leo Herrera is a Mexican self-taught visual artist, activist and writer based in San Francisco. His work focuses on the American queer experience, politics and history. His short, viral films have been seen by millions, featured in global media outlets and museum exhibits. He travels extensively to discover facets of queer culture/history and expose them to a new generation while paying homage to the past.
Leo’s current passion project is Fathers, a sci-fi documentary web series and multimedia project that imagines the world if AIDS never existed and a generation had lived. Weaving real-life events, survivor histories and fictionalized events, Fathers creates a surreal vision of an alternative universe.
Episode Highlights
- Leo discusses how he started
making films for nightlife events.
- The Fathers Project
started as he made art about HIV/AIDS, then morphed into the idea
of the absence of AIDS.
- His interest in sci-fi and
technology, and how that is woven into the Fathers
project.
- Talking to the ghosts of other
artists who died of AIDS as a guiding influence in his
work.
- What it means to imagine a Queer
Utopia as a vision of hope for our community.
- How being an immigrant is an
influence on his work, looking from the outside at the fictitious
future of America.
- The blend of queer and
immigration politics in his art to reflect the current political
climate.
- The Fathers Project as
an antidote to fear in the queer community.
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