Brazil was once a progressive country for LGBTIQ rights. It brought in anti-discrimination laws and the right to change gender, it was the first South America country to legalise same sex marriage in 2011 and conversion therapy is banned. While the election of Jair Bolsonaro is often cited as a turning point for LGBTIQ rights in Brazil, there were signs, as early as 2017, that the situation was changing.

Gaudencio Fidelis is a curator and art historian specialising in modern and contemporary art from the Americas. In 2017 he curated the exhibition QueerMuseum: Cartographies of Difference in Brazilian Art. He had to flee Brazil this year after the exhibition he curated incited a heated debate about freedom of expression and what qualified as art in Brazil. The exhibition was quickly closed down and it took a legal battle to enabled it to reopen a year later… a battle that was about much more than art.