MEXICAN FAMILIES

Familias Mexicanas is a series of photographic portraits from Mexico City that takes us into the private lives of gay, lesbian, and transgender families. These images spotlight a type of family that has been ignored for a long time in Mexico, until very recently.

This exhibition takes the reinvention of family as a plural phenomenon, based on a variety of affective relationships that are constructed through daily cohabitation. Here, connections are not established through blood relation or reproductive sexuality, but through the union of individuals pursuing happiness and commitment in love.

Óscar Sánchez’s portraits place his subjects in the intimate space of the home. By incorporating physical context in his images, the artist aims to transcend the depiction of the subject’s face and underline trace elements, allowing the spectator to devise an iconography of non-traditional families.

Making new forms of family more visible helps enable the acceptance and recognition of relationships that have historically been rejected or simply ignored. This contributes to the slow-moving process of legal validation for different kinds of unions and filiations, as happened recently with the Ley de Uniones de Convivencia and the amendments to the Mexico City's local law, which allows same-sex couples marriage and their right of adoption.