What Is Toxic and Sacred Masculinity? An Inside Look At Artists Who Explore Its Meaning & Journey
Art challenging what the ideal masculine looks like.
By: Jen Abreu
What is sacred masculinity? When we think of masculinity, it is often associated with strength, violence, dominance, and other toxic connotations.
The Bronx Art Space’s exhibition, The Sacred Masculinity, curated by Lizzy Alejandro, unveils sacred masculinity as the balance and connection between the mind and body. This space explores masculinity through the lens of spirituality, rituals, and mysticism to enlighten others.
The curator came up with the idea for this art exhibition from worldwide crimes involving femicides, rape and domestic violence against women. These crimes highlight society’s cultural pressures, norms and the core of toxic masculinity. By asserting to own another human’s body- it carries and spread misogyny, violence, homophobia, sex trafficking, sexual assault, and other gender based hate crimes.
Lizzy Alejandro wanted to showcase these artists:
- Ron Baker
- Reynolds Fernandez
- Charlie Liriano
- Dauris Martinez
- Henry Portillo
Their artwork illuminates masculinity in a new light. Each of the artist’s creations shares their journey with masculinity, healing, and speaking their truth.
Ron Baker
Baker’s works dive into rituals and African spirituality. He was inspired by his grandmother, who had altars and spiritual figurines around the house. As he got older, he now understands how in-tune his grandmother was with her ancestors and history. He gravitated towards it and commenced to create art based on his spirituality, experience, and knowledge. Baker’s work is meant to be presented as an altar space.
Materials on display are items found in Botanicas such as shells, beads, the statue of Elegua, and incense. The head clay sculptures have bandannas, shells, nails, and incense. They symbolize rebels and gang members from low-income communities striving to earn a living. The spiritual cleansing materials such as incense and blue candles portray the sculptures seeking peace and forgiveness from past mistakes. The incense and candles were lit during the exhibition to bring clarity, cleansing energy, and peace.
“When you gain knowledge, it is freedom. Once I started reading and learning about history, sculptures, and art, I saw women by the man’s side or holding him up and vice versa. Women are queens, and we are here because of them. I realized the way society [sees and treats] women is not what it’s supposed to be.”
Baker stresses how important it is to educate, research, read and learn from history. This approach gave him clarity and freedom. He wants others to have clarity, peace, and freedom too.
Charlie Liriano
The paintings are from a series called Transference. The acrylic paintings focus on the cycles of healing and emotional transformation. The dark and light hues are blended in balance to give softness to the art to show healing and wholeness. He saw lasting strength from women and painted female figures that embody life. Each female figure has a halo around them to be seen as divine beings.
Liriano shared his experience serving in the military and a moment that shows women are not the only ones affected by toxic masculinity. He shares that men are toxic to men not in a sexual way but by behavior. For instance, it was frowned upon if men needed medical attention for sickness or injury. They did not go to the doctor in fear of being mocked for being seen as weak. This behavior encourages the societal thought and expectation of pushing the body and mind past its limit until it harms oneself.
Liriano explains tough self-love helped him unlearn toxic masculinity.
“We do not know how to express ourselves, and it is detrimental to our well-being. Repressed emotions, thoughts, and behaviors take a toll on you. At one point, you gotta see-you have to take the cap off the bottle and let some pressure out. Analyze, look, and trace back perhaps traumatic experiences that you carried. You learn to take it with you and not dwell in it.”
Dauris Martinez
Martinez created a mixed media art two-part series of collages and sculptures that explore themes of body images, sexuality, and gender. Martinez’s art is identity-based and comes from self-discovery. In both series, the bodies do not have heads. The artist chose not to include his face to allow the viewer to see themselves, celebrate, and honor the male and female body.
In the first art series Portal Series, each art collage challenges both men and women’s societal ideal body image.
Historically women’s bodies are often objectified and sexualized. In the collage, the woman’s torso is encased in gold to honor the female form.
Both the men and the women’s bodies have no head. Instead, the head is replaced with the different stages of a butterfly to symbolize transformation.
The male body collage displays society’s ideal male physique. The male torsos are bounded by symmetry and overlap one another. The torsos are within a golden ring to represent the bodies in an alluring, sensual way and as a holy entity by resembling a halo.
“As a gay kid, I always felt different and afraid to express myself. In high school, when I began to understand myself and speaking to counselors, it helped me understand masculinity. I have always been drawn to strong women. Strong women made me feel at home, comfortable and given me the space to be myself. They are champions for me, so I do the same for them.”
In the second art series The Gift, Martinez composes and challenges traditional masculinity by using photos of his own body in a mythical landscape. The art collage is his own body in movement that gives a playful feel. The art being a collage is to represent imperfection. It disputes the hyper-masculine stereotype against men’s own bodies. For example, men are not taught to see or love their own bodies as something beautiful.
“In my identity, I want to be seen. In making my work, I did not want to be seen as my individual self. But to see me as part of the collective with all my identities-as a gay man, as a Dominican man, as a whole collective. I always wanted to represent all of my experiences.”
Henry Portillo
Portillo is a printmaker in the Bronx. He creates detailed woodblock prints about mythology and his depictions of these tales. His tales are about the Gawds who are imperfect, vulnerable and struggling with an existential crisis. Portillo’s artwork gave me William Blake (English poet, painter, and printmaker) vibes due to the illustrations and infusion of Biblical and mythology stories into their works. Portillo’s art explores family dynamics. The male characters in the art are overcoming personal struggles by learning to be in-tune with their emotions and provide emotional support to other people in their world. This is challenging the idea men are taught not to feel.
“I had to unlearn [traditional masculinity] through self love, acceptance, appreciating self and making peace with it. It’s ok to be frustrated, sad or like cute things. I don’t have to be super machismo or anything like that. It’s limiting myself because it’s being stuck in a role and never exploring who I want to be.”
Reynolds Fernandez
Fernandez is a fashion photographer, performance artist, and graphic designer. His digital collages represent the Deities of the West African Yoruba religion. Fernandez was inspired and captivated by the stories of these deities. He created works that echo their tales and integrate new developments into their stories.
Takeaway: Each artwork showed a journey of healing, self love and transformation. The artists’ understanding of their manliness in a new light freed them from the transitional views on masculinity. The artists emphasized addressing toxic masculinity and practicing the sacred masculine is to create safe spaces to be vulnerable, learning, and setting an example for the youth to challenge the machismo pressure.
What are other ways we can heal from toxic masculinity?
