You won’t believe this amazing sculpture that depicts LGBTQ+ life with style & flair
Mama, soy gay — one of the art installations on display at the Las Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain last March — was the gayest work of art I’ve ever seen … making it perfect for celebrating Pride this month.
Drag queens? Two women kissing while riding a winged unicorn and carrying a rainbow flag? And — at the center of it all — a sensitive young man staring forlornly into the future?
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The title even means “Mama, I’m gay” in Spanish — although Mama had probably already figured that out for herself, hadn’t she?
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Las Fallas is a two-week cultural festival every March in Valencia, Spain. Brent and I were lucky enough to see it this year.
The festival is notable for many reasons: the fireworks shows, the parades, and the hundreds of “fallas” — sculptures of varying sizes made from wood, styrofoam, and papier mâché — installed in neighborhoods all over the city.
And yes, all of the fallas sculptures tend toward the outrageous and over-the-top.
But the festival is most famous because of something called “La Crema” — the burning of all those sculptures in a surreal celebration on the final night.
Spain is a progressive, pro-LGBTQ country, and Mama, soy gay isn’t the first time Las Fallas has had gay visibility.
In 2017, a “mascletas” — a pyrotechnic display — included a tribute to the LGBTQ+ community. In 2021, one fallas featured two women kissing in traditional Valencian outfits. And in 2023, a transgender woman represented one of the “casals” — the community organizations at the heart of Las Fallas.
But there’s been controversy too. In 2018 a sculpture showing a chaste kiss between two boys was vandalized. And another fallas this year used gay sex to show a politician being humiliated.
Mama, soy gay is, to date, the biggest step forward for LGBTQ+ visibility at Fallas, and I was eager to meet the out artist, 40-year-old Valencian Mario Gual.
“The inspiration for the work was partly my life story,” he told me back in March. “But this is also the fallas I would have liked to have seen when I was a kid.”
Gual knew he wanted to be an artist at a very young age. He started participating in fallas workshops in 2001 when he was in “secundaria” — Spain’s version of high school.
He studied graphic design at university and soon began working on various fallas projects.
By 2021, he was considered one of the city’s top fallas artists and has created the fallas for Jordana Na — one of the most prestigious casals in Valencia — four years in a row.
But Mama, soy gay is the artist’s most personal work.
“Everybody knows a person, a brother, a sister, a friend who is LGBTQ,” he said. “We needed a fallas to tell their story. Because it can still be an elephant in the room no one talks about.”
Gual first had the idea for Mama, soy gay in 2009, but it took more than a decade to realize his vision.
“We presented it to a couple of casals over the years, but they always rejected it,” he told me.
Finally, in 2023, he proposed the project to La Nova d’Orriols, one of the city’s smaller casals. “They said yes very easily,” he said.
As we walked around the installation, the tall, lanky artist explained the artwork’s different elements to me.
The statue of the Christian martyr Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows?
“Those are the insults suffered by the LGBTQ community,” he said.
The small pink child coming down the steps?
“That’s me coming out of the closet,” he told me — metaphorically speaking since he really came out at age 19.
And another section featured two newsstands — a drab green one with dark headlines about homophobia in 2024, and a pink one with a happier version of the future. “The first transgender governor of Spain,” he said with a smile, noting one of the headlines.
The installation also included a fiery orange boat carrying gay historical figures such as Alan Turing, Josephine Baker, and Alexander the Great.
Meanwhile, the sensitive young man staring into the future is, of course, Gual.
As for the two women kissing while riding a winged unicorn and carrying a rainbow flag, well, perhaps that speaks for itself.
I found myself drawn to a collection of figurines off to one side.
“That’s Liberté guiding the people to equality,” Gual told me.
Once Fallas was over, I asked Gual about the reaction to Mama, soy gay.
“It was amazing,” he said. “Everyone wanted to take a photo with it, and it’s become a symbol of LGBTQ rights. Even the politicians were interested and came to visit.”
But Gual heard from one person who especially moved him.
“In Mama, I included a small sculpture of Manuela Trasobares with the other historical figures. She’s a famous older transgender woman. She came to see it, which was a complete surprise. It was like an angel appeared, and we had an incredible talk about life, my work, my parents, men. It was wonderful!”
Yes, Mama, soy gay burned along with most of the other installations back in March, but it lives on in the impressions it made and the conversations it started.
Gual is also already planning two future installations, one about lesbians and one about transgender people.
Michael Jensen is an author, editor, and one-half of Brent and Michael Are Going Places, a couple of traveling gay digital nomads. Subscribe to their free travel newsletter here.
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