Growing Inwards and Outwards Without a Clear Pattern

The book focuses on the medium of drawing which is integral to the artist’s practice. Drawings relate to our very first experiences of making art: the first childhood notebook, inks and pencils. Drawings rely both on collective memory and individual perception: the objects and creatures they depict grow into many forms and awaken different things in different viewers. Across the series of drawings, shared emotions arise: joy, sadness, longing. We are used to seeing these as something simple, the primary colours of existence – yet each carries a complex imprint of who we are. The drawings in the book reflect on the experience of growing up as a queer person of colour in a predominantly white environment and explore the themes of family, memory, belonging, immigration, queerness, desire, non-linear narratives and hybrid identities.

The design of this book taps into the embodied memories of holding a notebook: the shape and weight, the soft bend of the paper, the texture and colour of the canvas cover. The ripped edges of the artworks are visible. The book could be flicked through from the end, the start, or the middle. The text is optional. Some pages are left blank. This is an incarnation of the original context in which these drawings came to life, an echo of their nature as something personal, immediate, and imperfect — yet still conscious and intentional.

Aitor González is a London-based artist of Quechua and Spanish descent. Growing up in Valencia in the southeast of Spain, he was exposed to the duality of cultures from an early age: Quechua Peruvian on his mother’s side, and Spanish on his father’s. Existing as a queer person of colour in a predominantly white, Catholic environment had a powerful impact on González’s artistic perspective. A sense of alienation and difference has played a big part in his work, as much as the intricacies of cultural heritage not always visible to the Western gaze.

A specially commissioned essay on the artist’s work is written by Anastasiia Fedorova, a writer and curator based in London. A large amount of her work is dedicated to exploring queer communities and the poetic and radical potential of queer love and sex.