As an artist I construct hybrid representation of Gods and Idols by using pornography and images of half-naked (pin-up) white male bodies. I overlay these images with intricate designs and mixed representations of Gods from around the world but particularly focus on my own Catholic upbringing. In my art I place religious and regal imagery over each other. These images beg the questions: What is sacred and what is profane? What do we worship or what do we hold up as perfect? What is masculine? Who decides these things? And who has the power to do so?

My art is influenced by many factors: attitude of religious institutions towards gay culture, the superficiality of popular queer identity culture, race politics, gender performance, icons, sex and pornography. These issues have affected and transformed my life in my attempt to survive the conventions and control of religion, hetronormotivity and homonormonormtivity, and racism in western society.

“I explore the fragile material of gay magazines for my drawn collaged work,
transforming the images into appropriated childhood fantasy & homoerotic
forms while commenting on postcolonial issues. I trace my drawn images by
cutting and removing each traces of marked lines. The questons I ask and the
answers I seek are very much about what it means to be whole, liberated, self-
empowered and embodied as a gay Filipino man in a western, highly commercialized
Heteronormative & Homonormative society. At the same time failing to find my
own identity in a queer community that upholds the typical middle class, gay white
male as perfection of queer identity - homonormative.” -Julius Poncelet Manapul