The George Febres We Deserve: Photography and Queer Culture

Visual AIDS Research Fellow Eduardo Carrera investigates the artistic oeuvre of George Febres (1943-1996), an Ecuadorian artist, curator, and gallery owner who immigrated to New Orleans in the 1960s. Challenging prevailing interpretations of the artist's work, Carrera foregrounds sexuality and queerness in Febres' art.

1. Who Was George Febres?¹

Last summer, I had the opportunity to visit New Orleans, where the artist George Febres lived after leaving Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 1964, until 1996, when he passed away at the age of fifty-two due to complications from HIV. Febres gained widespread recognition as an artist in New Orleans. He operated an art gallery named Jules Laforgue in honor of his Franco-Uruguayan relative, a renowned Symbolist poet known for pioneering free verse. Febres is also known for being the founder, organizer, and driving force behind Visionary Imagism, a contemporary art movement that emerged in the late 1970s and masterfully wove influences from fantasy, jazz, rhythm, and blues together with voodoo, Cajun traditions, Mardi Gras festivities, and cultural and symbolic elements from Latin America and the tropics.²

In a letter addressed to his cousin, León Febres Cordero, the President of Ecuador between 1984 and 1988, Febres wrote that he lacked financial resources despite his prominent surname but possessed extraordinary talent, so he had to leave Ecuador and look for a job in the United States. Febres arrived in the United States due to an exchange of letters between his father and his cousin, Majorie Dixon Smith, who researched the family’s genealogical roots. Dixon Smith invited George and his brother to visit the United States through this correspondence. While his brother quickly accepted the invitation, George was on the verge of getting married. However, the wedding was canceled, and at the age of twenty, as some of us do after a romantic breakup, he decided to leave his country. In this regard, Febres’s life reflects the mythic success story of an immigrant, the American dream come true. His professional career was diverse: he worked in a factory, served as a busboy, waiter, maître d’, draftsman in the United States Army, and student and professor at the University of New Orleans and Tulane University. The artist also spent time in Mexico, parts of Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean over the course of his lifetime. These experiences as a diasporic subject, including navigating linguistic barriers and cultural assimilation, broadened Febres’s comprehension of sexuality and gender identity. This essay challenges interpretations of Febres’s artwork that overlook his sexuality, urging a reevaluation that embraces the queer facets of his art.³

Febres had few Hispanic acquaintances in the United States.⁴ His professional and social contacts, whether with artists, academics, or otherwise, were almost exclusively American. Occasionally, but infrequently, he attended receptions sponsored by the Consulate General of Ecuador.⁵ When Febres arrived in the United States, he decided to wholeheartedly embrace his newfound American identity. While he valued and cherished his Ecuadorian heritage—representing it constantly in his drawings—he set out to see himself as an American from New Orleans, not an Ecuadorian. As Tennessee Williams, whom Febres knew and depicted in his works, wrote in one of his plays: “Leaving is a way of dying.”⁶

As an artist, Febres pursued a diversity of forms and techniques, including drawing, colored pencils, collages, objects, photography, and serigraphy. In his artworks, Febres merges cultural elements from Guayaquil and New Orleans, honoring the warm tones that evoke tropical climates and symbols of his Ecuadorian heritage. While he opts for naturalistic representation, his work exhibits playfully distorted illusionism, where subtle incongruities in scale or shape create a sense of strangeness and surrealism. This peculiarity invites the viewer to interpret the figures as metaphors beyond simple representations, immersing them in a visual universe of irony, satire, and visual puns. Some of his artworks celebrate the fusion of human sexuality with crocodiles, flowers, palms, worms, hands and fruits, delving into their connection with the tropics, gender, and identity. Febres also curated exhibitions: one of the most well-known was My Cousin the Saint, which was held in 1982 at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and for which participating artists created works centered around a religious print of Francisco Febres Cordero Muñoz (Febres’s cousin; 1854–1910), who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1984.⁹

Febres’s art holds great historical significance, and placing it within a social and cultural context is crucial. To paraphrase Hal Foster as quoted in Douglas Crimp’s essay “Getting the Warhol We Deserve,” I want to consider Febres’s the art I need and deserve, not because it reflects or refers to a historical queer-migrant identity that confirms mine in the present, but because it challenges and questions the uniformity of any sexual identity.¹⁰Furthermore, Febres’s work introduces diverse representations of queer subjects and different perspectives on desire, sexuality, and the experiences of queer Latin American men in exile and migration. For me, this embodies the true meaning of “queer.” Queer identity in Febres’s work encompasses the experience of migration—the act of leaving one’s place of origin. Today, the relevance of this narrative, rich in historical depth, becomes even more pronounced in countering the co-optation of queer sexuality for capitalist ends and the tendency of art to sideline stories that diverge from the conventional canon. We find ourselves in a pivotal political era where fostering flourishing queer dialogues within art history is imperative, particularly in light of the ongoing rights violations faced by the LGBTQI+ community in the United States and around the world.

2. Portraiture and Difference

While Febres primarily worked in the medium of drawing, I have chosen to present a selection of photographic works (the artist primarily used Polaroids and silver gelatin prints) here, as I believe they speak most potently to the ways that his artistic legacy establishes alternative historical narratives.¹¹ It also makes visible the gestures of repetition manifested in his work, which can be interpreted as acts of resistance against representational norms. This challenge also speaks to the marginalization of queer and migrant experiences in his artistic discourse. Febres’s photography serves as a visual diary, capturing the transition of the intimate and the private into the realm of public consciousness. Depicting facets of his personal life while also addressing social encounters, his photographs bear witness to life, love, desire, and the sensuality of the human body. This essence is vividly apparent in the composition of his portraits, which carry a distinct subjective resonance, challenging and interrogating traditional constructs of gender and sexuality. As we delve into Febres’s photographic archive, embodiment unfurls, revealing cultural expressions, bodily imprints, and emotional reverberations. Both his archive and his photographs provide insight into how he confronted homophobia, persevered through oppression, celebrated moments of joy, explored spirituality, and navigated life. The photographic work of Febres stands out for its self-portraits, portraits of nude men, and depictions of male sensuality, desire, and vulnerability within a homoerotic context. These compositions frequently incorporate elements like flowers, fruits, vegetables, and animals. His artistic themes delve into multifaceted facets of personal experience, encompassing his Ecuadorian heritage, the journey of migration to the United States, and the exploration of his identity as a queer man.

Febres challenged the conventions of portraiture through his self-portrait Back Cover (Hair Today Gone Tomorrow), made in collaboration with Charles Wolff in 1979. Whereas traditional portraits depict a subject’s face, this work instead captures the artist from behind, an exuberant head of hair falling over his shoulders and a bandana encircling his crown. This image challenges traditional notions of gender and beauty by not allowing the viewer to determine whether the person depicted is a man or a woman. In this way, Febres questions gender stereotypes and how portraits can limit representation, inviting the viewer to reflect on the construction of identity and the role of gender in art. Febres’s headscarf references queer flagging practices in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States, known as “The Handkerchief Code,” wherein gay men wore bandanas of specific colors to communicate and have sexual encounters with each other.¹² Even today, bandanas in the New Orleans queer scene are still very relevant.

In Back Cover and other self-portraits, Febres uses performativity and language as tools to question and subvert gender stereotypes. Crafting various versions of himself that defy traditional conventions, the artist involves the audience in imagining his artistic and personal identity. This highlights the importance of the role of the viewer in the artwork. In addition, it is essential to mention that, after Stonewall in 1969, the growing visibility of the LGBTQI+ community and the struggle for civil rights, including those for women and African Americans, impacted the perception of traditional masculinity in the United States.¹³ Back Cover anticipates Robert Mapplethorpe’s Self Portrait (1981/92), wherein he photographed himself with his back turned, accentuating the intricate details of his hairstyle.

About his experience with language and translation, Febres mentions that there were no surprises when he arrived in Miami, as nearly everyone spoke Spanish.¹⁸ However, Mississippi was a stark contrast. When he first moved to the United States, Febres only knew around fifty words in English, a vocabulary he had learned while working in an airline office in Guayaquil. Following the American tradition of teaching young people the value of work, Majorie, Febres’s cousin, had lined up a job in a sheet-metal factory for him upon his arrival in Mississippi, to his surprise. Unfortunately, the other workers couldn’t understand anything he said, and he struggled to understand them. So, Febres began learning English again, this time with a distinctive Southern accent. While reviewing his archive, I found documents written by Febres in English that his partner Johnson had assisted in editing and correcting. Regardless of language barriers, however, Febres always found ways to communicate and be a great conversationalist.

Febres’s photograph Tres Amigos (1980) shows three objects placed in a corner: a banana, a cucumber, and a cactus. Each sits in its own half-undone banana peel, and they are positioned as if they were friends having a conversation. The phallic form of each object invites a conversation about their shared (and differing) symbolic and sexual connotations. The image deploys creative ingenuity and a play of humorous conventions to explore sensitive themes such as difference, sexuality, and friendship. Febres incorporated everyday objects and subjective narratives into his images, challenging the modern notion of photography, thereby paving the way for the use of postmodern photographic language. In his essay “The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism,” Crimp highlighted that modern photography was characterized by the pursuit of truth, objectivity, and a faithful representation of reality. This perspective is often associated with the belief in the camera as a neutral machine that captures reality as it is. On the other hand, postmodern photography challenged these notions by questioning the objectivity of images and the existence of a single truth, in turn challenging power structures and exploring the meaning of visual representation.¹⁹ Febres’s photographs create new narratives by juxtaposing objects through montage and exploring themes such as identity, sexuality, and gender.

Gabriela Aleman mentions that Tres Amigos refers to two Walt Disney films from 1942 and 1944, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, which narrate Donald Duck’s adventures in Latin America with the Brazilian parrot José Carioca and the Mexican rooster Pancho Pistolas. These films were funded by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, an initiative devised by the US State Department during the Roosevelt administration and led by Nelson Rockefeller as part of the Good Neighbor Policy. This policy aimed to eliminate negative stereotypes of Latin America and foster more positive relations with neighboring countries to the south of the US-Mexico border.²⁰ Within the context of Febres’s desire for assimilation within American culture, Tres Amigos conveys ideas of integration, adaptation, cultural homogenization, diversity, and difference. Jacques Derrida’s concept of “difference” refers to the idea that meaning is created through a system of differences between words and concepts rather than through fixed or stable meanings. No inherent or fixed meaning exists in any concept or word.²¹ Tres Amigos applies this concept to the notion of friendship—as a constantly changing and unstable state. By highlighting the difference between the cucumber, the banana, and the cactus, Febres questions traditional notions of friendship and affectivity.

For Derrida, friendship is a complex interaction of personal bonds and political dynamics. He also mentions that friendship plays a dual role in democratic societies: promoting inclusion while creating boundaries.²² Febres’s photography highlights the significance of language and discourse in shaping our understanding of friendship and its political implications. The similarities in textures and phallic form, and the divisions and differences in the composition of the image, underscore how personal connections are closely tied to broader socio-affective forces. The intimacy of friendship, according to Derrida, is based on a feeling of mutual recognition. We continue to know our friends even in their absence, which allows us to appreciate similarities and differences beyond a single interaction. Derrida argues that “from the moment we establish a friendship, we prepare for the possibility of outliving our friend or them outliving us. Of all the various desires associated with friendship, none compares to the unique hope and ecstasy toward a future that transcends death."²³ Despite the fact that this photograph was likely made before Febres was aware of the HIV epidemic, looking at Tres Amigos now calls to mind the loss of our beloved ones to AIDS-related complications.²⁴

In the years following the Stonewall riots, gay men underwent a process of cultural assimilation in the world of consumer capitalism. The homosexual male became a model consumer, shaping and defining taste and style for mainstream markets. Febres’s choice of alligator skin as a material for his work is a critical metaphor for both the artist’s queer identity as well as his migratory identity. New Orleans and Guayaquil are known for their ecosystems, home to crocodiles, alligators, lizards, and all kinds of reptiles. Alligators symbolize flexibility and adaptation to different environments, mainly tropical zones. “Tropicality,” however, is a social construction, a form of otherness, rather than a material reality. Since the fifteenth century, Europeans saw tropical regions as paradises characterized by exotic otherness. However, in the eighteenth century, as Samantha A. Noël argues in Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism:²⁹

"[a]n association was established between tropical climate and disease, and thus, the term tropical connoted negativity and darkness. It was also believed that the tropical climate caused physical laxity and “relaxed the moral fiber.” A similar perception emerged in the United States, where the tropical environments of the rural South were characterized by swamps, jungles, and marshes."

The notion of “tropical sexuality” has historically been associated with the idea that people living in tropical regions or cultures considered “tropical” are more liberal or promiscuous in expressing their sexuality. Febres’s work challenges this stereotype and re-signifies it as a space of resistance, wherein more complex and affirmative representations of queer sexuality and migrant identities in the United States can flourish.

At different moments in the 1980s, Febres showcased two photographs from his Gardens of Louisiana and New Orleans series in Atlanta and New York, first at Nexus Gallery and then at the Alternative Museum. One of these works, titled Hibiscus, portrays a bouquet of the titular flowers; penises are seamlessly integrated into the composition, fusing the native flora of the Americas and Africa with male sexual organs. This hybrid representation prompts viewers to contemplate male sexuality as an intrinsic aspect of nature. The second work, Two Roosters, combines a rooster with a phallus, resulting in a dual and provocative interpretation. Febres plays with the multiple meanings of words and the symbolic potential of the image—the English term “cock,” refers to both the bird and the penis—in order to explore the links between sexuality and language. The subjects in Two Roosters constitute what I am calling queer photomontage, a communicative technique wherein photos and other graphic elements are manipulated and superimposed to create a visual composition that reflects on gender relations critically. Traditional photomontage is often used to synthesize the relationship between an image and text, transforming the apparent uniformity of a static image into a more dynamic and meaningful graphic representation. The rooster and the penis are symbols deeply rooted in virility and masculinity. The inclusion of the rooster, often associated with masculinity and sexuality in specific contexts, may suggest the evocation of animal instincts or the primal and essential essence of male desire. The photograph establishes a dialogue between nature and human sexuality, presenting a naturalization of desire.

The series of Polaroids that make up Louisiana Flowers depicts Calla lilies, their anthers replaced by penises. This surreal juxtaposition suggests distorted reality, alluding to dreams and desires, confounding our usual assumption that photographs have a direct relationship to a kind of “truth.”³³ As with Mapplethorpe and Fani-Kayode, both of whom also depicted flowers in their photographs, the choice of flora is also significant in Febres’s work. He featured native flowers such as lilies, but he also explored species less common to the United States. Flowers frequently serve as symbols of desire and sensuality across various cultural contexts. They manifest as emblems intertwined with eroticism, often portrayed as innate and untamed. In the context of Febres’s photographs, this connection emerges as an expression of queer sexuality.

3. The Archive: a brief approximation, or, Inside the Archive

In his archive, Febres captured many portraits of queer men of color, including the nude portrait Alex Padua in George's Garden (1977), drawing comparisons to the artist George Dureau, another key figure in the history of art by queer artists in the southern United States who made portraits of racialized men. Alex’s pose—his hand on his waist—evokes or reinterprets the classic poses found in Greek and Roman sculpture, emulating the masculine idealization that reflects the model’s beauty. Febres’s photograph alludes to these aesthetic standards and the historical portrayal of the male form in classical art, notably featuring a non-white male model. An animal skull suspended on a wooden structure behind Padua, along with some plants that complement the scene, transport us to the context of Louisiana, adding a distinctive and contextual touch to the photograph. Febres’s photographs predate Mapplethorpe’s Black Book.³⁴

Note from the author: I would like to thank the University of Pennsylvania's Art History program, Jonathan D. Katz, Nicolás Subia, Sophia Larigakis, Kyle Croft, Visual AIDS, Heather Green, and The Historic New Orleans Collection, without whom this essay could not have been written.

About the Author

Eduardo Carrera R is a second-year PhD student in Art History with a focus on Latin American contemporary and modern art. He earned his B.A. from PUCE, Ecuador, an M.A from UIC, Barcelona, and a second M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests encompass postcolonial and queer approaches to art history, curatorial practices, and writing. Currently, he serves as the content editor and curator for "Dispossessions in the Americas: The Extraction of Bodies, Land, and Heritage from La Conquista to the Present," a multidisciplinary initiative between the Mellon Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania.

Most recently, Eduardo held the position of Director and curator at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito, where he curated the annual exhibition program (CAC Quito 2017-2022). His writings have been featured in catalogs and specialized magazines, including Phaidon Editorial, Visual AIDS, Artpress, L'internationale, Artishock, Terremoto, among others. With over ten years of experience, he has worked and collaborated with museums and cultural institutions in Ecuador, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Peru, Argentina, and the United States.

Writing from the 2023 Research Fellowship is edited by Sophia Larigakis.