“Why don’t you start by introducing yourself to me.”

“Ok! My name is David González, I am Colombian but I moved to Canada six years ago, and I am currently an illustrator and visual artist in Montreal.”

David studies at Concordia, completing a Fine Arts degree with a focus on studio arts. Though the bulk of their practice is based in illustrating for school throughout the year, they also make paper and durational pieces, and their most recent one is called First Love/Late Spring. The piece consists of them writing out the lyrics to Mitski’s song by the same name in black paint onto a giant piece of paper every day for 13 days, covering the sheet completely, and doing it all over again in white. A lot of their art revolves around the concept of queer visibility, in conversation with their conservative Colombian upbringing.

“Growing up in Colombia was really difficult, because it’s generally a really conservative, really religious country, so growing up being completely and utterly gay I couldn’t really find myself there. So when I got here I was like ‘Oh! I don’t have to worry about like literally anything else. I can just make art about being gay for the rest of my life if I want to!’ And that’s what I’ve been doing.”

Early on, David had been making self-portraits as a way to not only develop their art practice, but also as a means of expressing their own gender and sexuality, depicting themselves the way they wanted people to see them. As a result of this, their art has gained a cult following of predominantly queer people on Instagram, who reach out and commission David to draw them the way David draws themself.

“I think the reason I draw so much erotic gay art is because I was so repressed when I was growing up that I didn’t feel like I could, so now that I can, it’s like I’m not gonna do anything else”

– David González

“Being commissioned to draw specific people makes the people in the drawings kind of part of a family, and I get commissioned a lot to draw drag queens as well as trans and genderqueer people, I assume because they are able to see themselves in my art style. It’s really fun and I like to use thick lines, bold colours, and hard-to-miss bright white highlights.” The art David makes is all about being seen, being gay, and standing out. Each piece carries a lot of symbolism, like the constantly recurring symbol of the snake, which David traces back to their upbringing in Colombia.

“Growing up, my grandma always told me snakes are evil – of the devil. Later on I realized that they aren’t evil at all, just kind of misunderstood. The historical depictions of it as being a monster is what really attract me to it, so I started putting snakes everywhere because I felt like, ‘that’s me!’ […] The last piece that I worked on was a series of 13 illustrations based on a book called La vie et ses merveilles, and it’s all cutouts of the book that I redrew. It was all tiny little naked guys, but I made them just fully gay. Then I layered text on top of each piece that said: ‘commit a sin twice and it will not seem to you a sin.’ When I was growing up that was kind of a warning: don’t do this because, if you do, you’ll stop feeling bad about it and you should feel bad if you’re doing these things. But I just switched it to say ‘yeah it doesn’t feel like a sin because it’s not.’”

Using Instagram as a tool for sharing their art and growing their brand, they have been able to play with the concept of gaze and visibility through intertwining pictures of themself with drawings of their following, setting the spotlight on their shared queer experiences in the multitudes of forms they come in. It’s been a way for them to create a community to see and be seen, in a veritable garden of queer identity.

“My art is about my personal experiences and a piece starts as an autobiographical thing always… for example, I did a series where I inserted myself into a bunch of music videos in the places of the characters. I have a strong desire to see myself on paper.” David’s art tells a story of long-awaited openness towards one’s gender and sexuality in an eruption of genuine playfulness and eroticism.

“I think the reason I draw so much erotic gay art is because I was so repressed when I was growing up that I didn’t feel like I could, so now that I can, it’s like I’m not gonna do anything else!”

In the summer, David wakes up, goes for a hike, comes home to draw for three to four hours, then has a coffee and draws for another three to four hours, totaling about seven hours a day illustrating at their desk. “A lot of my art has been about obsession, about repeating the same thing over and over, and how that helps me heal from trauma. I’m not very good at talking about my feelings. I use art to communicate and to heal in the process, so all my art is meditative at the core.”

David goes by the name @hypermasc on all their social media, and we have compiled some of our favourite pieces by them
in the following pages.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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On November 6, Americans participated in midterm elections, voting in senators, house representatives, and governors. Early estimates say that over 113 million people voted in the midterms, with an incredible surge of young people and women. This election is believed to be a referendum on President Trump and how the public feels about his government. After two years of Republican rule, Democrats gained control of the House, winning 31 additional seats to secure a majority (some races are still undetermined).

The 2018 midterms saw many historical victories across the country. More than 100 women were elected: 95 in the House of Representatives and 12 in the Senate, among them were a record 42 women of colour. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Abby Finkenauer (D-IA) both became the youngest women ever to be elected to Congress at the age of 29. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), became the first Muslim women to serve in Congress, as well as becoming the first Somali-American congresswoman and Palestinian-American congresswoman, respectively. Breaking ground for Native Americans, Sharice Davids (D-KS) and Deb Haaland (DNM) became the first Native American women elected to Congress, 56 years after Native Americans were granted the right to vote. Additionally, more than 100 LGBTQ candidates won races at the federal, state, and local levels. Jared Polis, Chris Pappas, Tammy Baldwin, Jennifer Web, and the aforementioned Sharice Davids are all the first openly LGBTQ identifying candidates to be elected in their respective states.

Suicide Crisis in Nunavik
Content warning: suicide

So far in 2018, 15 youths have taken their own lives in Nunavik, the subarctic region of Quebec. This suicide crisis is affecting an area with a population of 12,000, 90 per cent of whom are Inuit. In October alone, two people took their lives in Kuujjuaq, a town of 3,000. In response, Kativik Ilisarniliriniq (Nunavik’s school board) organized an emergency meeting from October 30-31 to “plot out a course of action.” Seventy people from various Nunavik organizations attended, as did a delegation from the Quebec government.

Robert Watt, president of the Kativik council of school commissioners, addressed the crisis in a letter to government officials: “over the past four weeks, our communities have dealt with youth suicides that directly affected students, families and staff in Nunavik.” Watt also wrote, “one of the victims was as young as 11 years old. We feel the situation requires urgent collective action at the regional level.”

Tunu Napartuk, the mayor of Kuujjuaq, opened the meeting calling for immediate action: “we are talking about the same thing from ten years ago, we keep passing the buck. We need to break this wall, during today and tomorrow, how can we start breaking the wall?”

In a press release, Quebec’s new government stated that they are “concerned about this situation, and wishes to support Indigenous communities.” It is also stated that “the ministries concerned will […] be advised of the measures to be taken.” While the Quebec government sent a delegation to the emergency meeting and has announced a Public Inquiry Commission on relations between “Indigenous Peoples and certain public services in Quebec,” they have not yet announced any concrete actions or policy. Due to the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, health care services are under provincial jurisdiction. Mary Simon, Kuujjuaq native and former ambassador to Denmark, lost her 22 year-old niece to suicide this year. In a public post on Facebook, she wrote, “we desperately need ongoing mental health support and services in every Inuit community.” She and others have emphasized the lack of physical and mental health services for Inuit communities. Simon pointed out that she had made a previous plea for government aid in the crisis two years ago in a report, yet did not receive the support requested. “I am making this plea again and others should do likewise,” she said.

This phenomenon is not limited to Nunavik. Statistics show that First Nations youths are five to six times more likely to commit suicide than non-Indigenous youths. In the case of Inuit youth, the rates are eleven times the national average. The suicide crisis in Nunavik is also reminiscent of the 2015- 2016 crises in First Nations in Manitoba and Northern Ontario.

Mass Emigration in Venezuela

According to a United Nations report published on November 1, three million people have fled Venezuela since 2015, one in 12 people of the country’s population. The increase of people leaving Venezuela is a result of political and economic crises, including an increase in violence, hyperinflation, and lack of food and medicine. The crisis has been ongoing since 2015; however, conditions have worsened in the last six months, forcing elevated more people to flee. In August 2018, the United Nations declared it one of the largest mass migrations in Latin American history.

2.4 million migrants have relocated to, or sought refuge in, other Latin American countries or other parts of the world. Over one million migrants have fled to Colombia, which shares a border with Venezuela, with 3,000 new migrants arriving every day. Peru has received over half a million Venezuelans thus far, with Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil also taking in a substantial number of migrants.

Under the current president, Nicolás Maduro, economic and political conditions have worsened after oil prices started falling in 2014. Previous to the price drop, Venezuela earned 96 per cent of its revenue from oil. Maduro has called the migration crisis “fake news” created to justify interference on an international scale.

The World Bank warns that other Latin American countries should expect more migrants in the near future, as political change in the country cannot be expected soon. While neighbouring countries have taken in large numbers of migrants, the situation warrants “a more robust and immediate response from the international community,” according to Edward Stein, the Joint Special Representative for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and International Organization for Migration (UNHCR-IOM).

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