CaixaForum Madrid will open on July 17th an exhibition dedicated to Disney, where many works of this big-fish of animated films meet since its founding to the present day. After having passed through Barcelona, the collection arrives in the capital along with a program of activities both for adults and children.

With the title "The Art of Telling Stories", the exhibition rescues the origins of Disney, a company created around the passion of its creator, Walter Elias Disney, who began working as a draftsman in the early 20th century. In 1920, he and his brother decided to settle in Hollywood to launch the first large cartoon factory in the world. In those early days, Mickey Mouse was the star, but still in black and white.

Disney has strongly bet on technological innovation. In 1928 his film "The Steam Boat" was the first animated product in which image and sound were perfectly synchronised. The technicolour arrived in 1932, with the short-film "Flowers and trees". The next milestone was a full-length cartoon-film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", which was released just five years later, in 1937.

The childhood of many of us would not have been the same without Disney’s stories. Although in recent years the company has become a giant of the film industry with capacity to acquire the production of other major labels, such as Marvel, the origins were clearly aimed at a kid's audience eager for fun and entertainment. Nor can we forget the impact of Disney on our way of understanding nowadays many classic stories that have been completely transformed to adapt to the tastes and ideology of the company. The factory was also (let's not forget it) a product of its time, emerged in full American economic boom, in a postwar period very sensitive to tragic and dramatic ends that chose to offer a rereading of the stories to become the paradigm of the happiness that they are today.

If there is something to acknowledge on Disney is its ability to create myths. Its proposals have gone far beyond the drawings with which the company grew up, it has transcended borders beyond imagining, and has created an empire close to reaching its first century of trajectory. And as a final touch is its founder, who died in 1966, around which emerged one of the most widespread urban legends of our time: that his body was cryopreserved awaiting new technological advances to revive it. A way to make the fantasy eternal.

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.