Among women only

Louis Fratino’s paintings, drawings, and ceramics depict moments and spaces from his everyday life, both remembered and imagined. Mining the history of art, Fratino synthesizes visual languages from antiquity to modernity to conjure an amalgam of still life, contemporary landscape, and the queer body. Often including himself and his partner in quotidian domestic scenes, such as this extended family gathering, his work revels in queer intimacy and family bonds.

The centerpiece of this painting is a tabletop from the artist’s childhood home, pictured in the glow and disarray following a summertime meal. From the top left, the figures represent his niece, sister, mother, partner, himself holding his nephew, sister-in-law, and youngest sister. Fratino elaborates on the painting’s title and the gendered nature of this scene: “I had just finished reading Cesare Pavese’s short story, ‘Among Women Only’ in which Pavese adopts the voice of a woman as the narrator . . . As a gay man I am constantly thinking about my identity as a man in relationship to the feminine. Sometimes I understand my queer masculinity as an alternate way of being in my family . . . I was thinking about the division of labor along gender lines—who cleans up, who raises children, who bears children—and how I position myself along those boundaries as someone who wants to cross them.”