- Olivia Brooks
- Oct 7
- 7 min read
An Interview with Giorgio Celin
Haley Laningham
Giorgio Celin currently lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. He creates vibrant works that explore human relationships: the longing for intimacy and the tenderness and melancholy of living in a lonely world where individualism is rampant. He aims to celebrate the beauty, the queerness, and the complexity of the Latinx diaspora. Celin says, “My art delves into the profound depths of the human experience. Each painting serves as a self-portrait, reflecting my journey of self-discovery and introspection while inviting viewers to connect with the universal emotions depicted. Central to my vision is the celebration of diversity and the amplification of marginalized voices, particularly within the Latinx narrative. By reclaiming space and dismantling stereotypes, I aim to foster unity and celebrate triumph amidst adversity, reading the figure of the immigrant through a queer lens.”
Read on to learn about Celin’s journey as an artist.
-Haley Laningham
See more of Celin’s work here.
Haley Laningham: How did you become an artist? How did your background influence your journey to becoming one?
Giorgio Celin: I think I was born a creative. For as long as I can remember, I was always drawing. As soon as I learned to write, I started writing too. What took time wasn’t creating art, it was recognizing that I was an artist. Coming from an immigrant, working-class background, we faced a lot of struggles. Honestly, it sometimes felt like a luxury, or even a source of shame, to spend so much time drawing and writing. Of course, my background shaped my journey. I had to work. I had to earn a living. I didn’t have the money to pursue an academic education, and there was no space to indulge in dreams; I had more urgent things to take care of. But as my financial situation began to improve, I started asking myself deeper questions: Who am I? Who do I want to be? Realizing and accepting that I am an artist was the first step. Once I embraced that, everything else started to fall into place.
HL: How would you describe your broad artistic goals?
GC: Honestly, my goal is simple: I want to be known in my country and its diaspora. That’s what truly matters to me. I want my work to be recognized and felt by my people by those who share my history, my culture, my struggles, and my joys. Everything I create comes from that place. If my work can speak to them, reflect them, or even challenge them in some way, then I’ve done what I set out to do. Recognition outside of that is fine, but being seen and understood by your own community is the full circle moment any diasporic kid dreams of. I’ll leave it to the readers to interpret what I really mean by that.
HL: Can you tell us about the inspiration behind “the chosen family” in the context of queer Latinx-diaspora, if that fits?
GC: Chosen family is a deeply important concept for immigrants and especially for queer people within the Latinx diaspora. In our cultures, the saying “no hay nada como la familia” runs deep. But what happens when your biological family isn’t around, or when their religious beliefs make you feel unwelcome or unaccepted? As a kid, I often felt isolated. So, as I grew older, I naturally gravitated toward others who were also navigating that sense of not belonging. For many of us, particularly people of color, gender non-conforming individuals, immigrants living in poverty, and queer folks in general, chosen family becomes everything. It becomes your support system, your safe space, your emotional home. Sometimes, your biological family can’t, or won’t, accept who you are. When that happens, you’re left to find your own community. That’s where chosen family comes in. It’s not just about survival; it’s about creating love and belonging on your own terms.
HL: What is behind your decision to paint the figures in “the sexile” purple? Is it supposed to mimic the way moonlight distorts color, or was the driving force in this decision something more complicated?
GC: The choice to paint the figures in “the sexile” purple was very intentional. Purple is a color often associated with mourning, and that’s exactly why I used it. I wanted to capture the emotional weight and grief that comes with the experience of sexile. Sexile is a term coined by scholar Manolo Guzmán to describe the experience of queer people, particularly queer immigrants, who are exiled from their families or homelands because of their sexuality or gender identity. It speaks to that specific kind of displacement where your queerness leads to your exclusion, whether culturally, emotionally, or physically. In the process of migration, especially as a queer person, there’s a part of you that dies. You’re never quite the same again. In order to access freedom, or simply to survive, you have to mourn your old self, your past life, and sometimes your connections to home and family.
HL: What do you love about the medium of oil paint? How does it serve you, and what are its difficulties, if any?
GC: There’s something about oil paint that I can’t fully explain. It’s almost visceral. The texture, the smell, the richness of the colors---it feels sacred to me. There’s a physical and emotional intimacy in working with it that I haven’t found in any other medium. At the same time, oil painting is incredibly challenging. I didn’t come from an academic art background, so part of my decision to work in oils was intentional---a way of proving myself. It’s a medium with so much history and prestige, and as someone from a working-class, immigrant background, there’s something powerful in claiming space within that tradition. I’ve always felt like I had to push harder to be taken seriously, so using oil paint was both a personal and political choice. It’s a demanding medium technically, and even financially, but it's a challenge I embrace. Honestly, it’s still difficult to this day, but it’s a challenge I’m happy to take on. It keeps me grounded in the process and reminds me that I belong here, even if I came in through a side door.
HL: You use very bold color (which I love). How does this choice help you express your artistic mission?
GC: Thank you! The use of bold color in my work comes from the same place as many other choices in my practice stepping away from academic conventions. When I began pursuing art seriously, I noticed there was a kind of unspoken rule: that 'good' painting meant being able to mix and mute colors to mimic the subtlety of reality. But realism in painting was never something I cared about. So, I made a conscious decision to use bold, almost cartoonish colors. It was a way to reject the pressure of realism and to create a visual language that felt more honest to me---one that wasn't trying to imitate life, but to reimagine it. It’s also a nod to the Caribbean, where I have cultural roots. The color combinations you see there are striking, vivid, and unapologetic. Bold colors carry memory, resistance, joy, and identity.
HL: The people in “Figures in pink” are so well painted that I can feel their sadness. In your mind, what is it that has caused them pain? Do you know as the artist, or do the figures have their own lives you’re not privy to?
GC: I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as pain what I wanted to express is something I often return to in my work: the dilemma of intimacy. This idea is rooted in the “hedgehog’s dilemma,” a concept from Schopenhauer, which explores the challenge of getting close to others without hurting them or being hurt yourself. It’s about that struggle to find the right emotional distance between two people: close enough to not feel lonely, but not so close that you lose yourself or end up causing harm. It’s a constant negotiation, a push and pull. That’s the emotional space Figures in Pink occupies: I don’t always know exactly what they’re going through, but I try to hold space for that ambiguity, the same way we try to understand the people in our own lives.
HL: How do you use figures in your paintings to convey emotion? Do you have an emotional story you’re trying to tell across all of your work, or would you say that each painting is its own universe?
GC: Sometimes I paint from my own life, there are personal stories that find their way into my work. But more often, I’m trying to convey an emotion rather than a specific narrative. That said, I definitely see each painting as its own universe. There’s something I find deeply fascinating about this: how a figure can become a mirror for the viewer. That emotional projection, that personal interpretation, is incredibly powerful. I remember a show I had in Miami where I had a painting that included a representation of Icarus. One woman who came to the show saw it as a depiction of suicide. That moment really impacted me. It reminded me how essential it is to leave a door open for the viewer, to create space for their own conversation with the work.
HL: Is there anything to which you’d like to direct our readers’ attention?
GC: Absolutely. Please remember: art is not about money. As much attention as the “art market” gets, it’s not the whole picture. Yes, the headlines and the figures can be wild, and money plays a huge role in our lives, but some of the most powerful, imaginative artists in history were never part of the commercial side of art. You can be an extraordinary artist and work a part-time or full-time job. You can be deeply inspiring and never sell a single painting. You can end up in the history books without ever setting foot in a gallery or knowing what an auction house even is. Please don’t let a hyper-capitalist lens define what art is, or what it means to be an artist. There is Art about human connection, vision, expression, truth, there is commercial art, there is pop art etc…
I beg you to hold onto that, especially if you're just starting out. Money and art can intertwined, but they are not the same thing; commercial success is not the thing you should strive for.
GIORGIO CELIN (b. 1986 in Barranquilla, Colombia) is a self-taught artist currently living between Barranquilla, Colombia and Barcelona, Spain. His work explores themes including migration, belonging, personal relationships, and nostalgia. Celin has recently exhibited his work at galleries and institutions including MACRO Museum (Rome, Italy), Fondazione Michelangelo Pistoletto (Venice, Italy), 68 Projects (Berlin, Germany), Steve Turner (Los Angeles,USA) König Gallery, (Berlin, Germany), Taymour Grahne (London, UK), Eve Liebe Gallery (London, UK) Asia Art Center (Taipei, Taiwan), Beers (London, UK), Annarumma Gallery (Naples,Italy), Spinello Projects (Miami), Breach (Miami), Lorin Galley (LA, USA). Celin’s work has been featured in Monopol, XIBT, It’s Nice that, Metal Magazine, Exibart, among others.
HALEY LANINGHAM is a PhD candidate in Poetry at Florida State University. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and was the previous Art Editor for Southeast Review.