Hyper-sexed and sexually compulsive people have been stigmatized throughout history despite providing necessary regulating functions in society as well as an important cathartic release from social tension. People labeled with descriptors such as “faggot, wanker, or bitch” have appropriated these terms and laid claim to them in order to turn their derogatory meaning into more positive identifiers. My piece similarly seeks to rearrange that balance. By paying homage to the sexually compulsive, I am proposing them as sexual revolutionaries and rebels who fulfill an important role that has never been praised or tolerated. San Francisco is a very well-documented place of the sexual avant-garde, after all. In my work, I approach these explorations with humor, joy, and playfulness.
–E. de M.
Edmundo de Marchena, born in Venezuela, draws on culture from todo el mundo to explore both the glamour and the separateness of life in familiar and foreign places. His multimedia art has been featured in museums and galleries in Venezuela, New York, and Europe. De Marchena has appeared in numerous cultural publications, been interviewed for Globovision TV, and is included in such prestigious collections as the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, Venezuela and the University of Salamanca Art Collection, Spain. De Marchena received a scholarship from Parsons School of Design where he later taught in the Product Design department.