The Apollo Queer Art collective is essentially an international ensemble of queer visual artists that specialize in a variety of different mediums, who have come together to create contemporary queer art inspired by the Greek god Apollo. Building on the rich cultural significance of Apollo and his association with homosexual aesthetics, to offer a modern perspective of Apollo’s story as an analogy for our own lived experiences. Each artist chose a color of the LGBTQ+ flag to use not only as a prominent color to depict their art work, but also to draw inspiration from the associations of that color. We then reflected on our own experiences and the story of Apollo, to find a connection that inspires an artwork. When this collective was founded in 2021, we chose the Olympian deities of Apollo from classical Greek and Roman mythology as his is considered the Patron of the arts, he association with male idealized beauty standards and his history of deep intimate homosexual relationships. For this project we were interested to see the different kind of interpretations and visual expression that would arise from a group of artists that reside in different countries, if we all used Apollo as protagonist.

If Homosexuality is more than just sex, then homosexual art is more than just images of sex. (James M. Salslow, 1999)