Who is Jorge Escobar?
Jorge Ariel Escobar is a queer/Latinx image-maker who holds a BFA from James Madison University and is currently a MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is an Ed-GRS Fellow. His work focuses on themes of intimacy, desires, and relationships between queer/gay men using his own experiences as the basis of his research. Primarily working with photography, his work crosses between digital, analog, and alternative processes to visualize these concepts. Within his current work he has been experimenting with lumen prints as a way to execute his current ideas for his upcoming thesis exhibition, I Think We Could’ve Been Something.
Jorge has attended workshops at Penland School of Craft, Anderson Ranch Art Center, and has been an artist in residence at AZULE. As a solo artist, he has exhibited with VALET Gallery and the Jane Sandelin Gallery both in Richmond, VA. Other credits include group exhibitions at RI Center for Photographic Arts (Providence, RI), the Trout Museum of Art (Appleton, WI), the Photographic Arts Center (Denver, CO), and the Center for Fine Art Photgraphy (Fort Collins, CO), where his work received an Honorable Mention as part of their Center Forward 2022 exhibition.
“Would You Lie With Me?”
By Jorge Ariel Escobar
Would You Lie With Me is a body of work that serves as a love letter to all the men that have come in and out of my life whether they have been romantic, platonic, or purely physical. The core of my work is all about the act of "looking" and finding companionship with another person regardless of how long it may last and celebrating the fulfillment of queer desire; which with my upbringing in a Latin-American Catholic household was something my younger self never thought would be achievable. I'll be sharing this work as well as my process of using dating apps like Grindr as a means to find subjects to photograph for these intimate scenes.
“I Think We Could Have Been Something”
By Jorge Ariel Escobar
I Think We Could’ve Been Something is an ongoing body of work that focuses on queer intimacy and missed connections created through short-term romances. The work considers the idea of hookup culture within the LGBTQ+ community specific to gay and queer men. Originating from the act of meeting men through queer-dating apps such as Grindr, I have begun inviting men whom I’ve met through various means to be photographed in intimate scenes which in turn becomes a way of creating a form of queer intimacy through image-making. My use of the alternative process of lumen printing allows me to queer the photograph by producing pink colors on the silver gelatin surface. This color becomes a visual representation of both the body where the prints mimic how blood rushes to certain points of the body in moments of passion as well as placing these intimate constructed fantasies through rose-tinted glasses further idealizing these short-term romances that “could’ve been something.”
Want to learn more about Jorge Escobar? Check out our article!
“Color is all around us and plays a vital role in our lives. Artists tend to learn towards colors that help them to express their identities through their artwork. Jorge Escobar is a queer latin photographer from the Madison area who uses a significant amount of pink in his work. To better understand his reasoning behind this, Alexandra Debler sat down with Escobar to have a colorful conversation about his work.”
Behind-The-Scenes Look
Take a peak behind the curtain and see how Jorge Escobar developed his photo prints for his last project:
“I Think We Could Have Been Something.”