Fabián Cháirez

Fabián Cháirez (born 13 December 1987) is a Mexican plastic artist known for his paintings on sexuality and traditional masculinity (machismo). He is both a painter and sculptor. His work has been exhibited at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Museo de Arte Moderno, and Museu de l'Art Prohibit. He has been based out of Mexico City since 2012.

Multiple paintings of his have caused controversy over their themes of queerness and the subversion of gender roles in contrast to their subjects, notably La Revolución and the works in his 2025 exhibit La venida del Señor.

Life and career Cháirez was born on 13 December 1987 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico. His mother was a teacher, and he describes his father as being a charro. When he came out to his family, they took him to church, trying to change his sexuality. Before deciding to study art, he considered going into advertising. He moved to Mexico City in 2012.

Cháirez says he became an artist as an escape, a way to embrace who he was and fight back. He points to a near-death experience he had around the age of 20 when he and his male partner were attacked with a knife as being important for his career development. The experience caused him to reflect on why and how people can hate others enough to kill them just because of who they are.

Early in his career, Cháirez painted murals, being involved with the graffiti scene in Chipas. His resin and fiber glass sculptures of legs, sometimes with penises, wearing high-heels are featured in LGBTQ bars throughout Mexico City; he dubbed them Tucked y untucked, in reference to tucking. In 2015, he was offered to display an individual exhibition at the José María Velasco Gallery in Tepito after the original artist had cancelled last minute. He also does drag under the name María Magdalena, which was his grandmother's name.

La Revolución

Cháirez's oil painting La Revolución , created in 2014, depicts Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata posing pin-up style wearing only a pink sombrero and high heels made of pistols astride an erect horse. The work was exhibited at Marrakech Salón, a bar in Mexico City. Cháirez also received death threats for the piece.

I understand the anger of some because of an image that does not correspond to their expectations. I have felt rage when others have tried to impose an idea on me that does not fit with my way of thinking. This is something that many of us face every day, which is why with my painting I search for other possibilities of existing, of seeing and of interpreting reality.

The painting has become a symbol of struggle and pride for some in the Mexican LGBTQ community. – at the Academy of San Carlos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) was composed of nine large oil paintings created between 2018 and 2023. He stated that the works were produced to draw "comparison between religious ecstasy and sexual ecstasy". Most of the paintings involved same-sex pairs fully clothed in traditional Catholic religious attire in homoerotic poses.

It faced backlash from some religious groups due to its religious subjects – nuns, priests, angels – and suggestive nature. Five days later, protesters entered the building and staged a faux closure of a portion of the exhibit with caution tape and signs.

On 3 March 2025, federal judge Francisco Javier Rebolledo Peña granted the AAC a temporary suspension order against the exhibit, giving the UNAM 24 hours to enforce it. As a result, the show was suspended. A hearing was also set for 11 March to determine whether to grant a permanent suspension. Cháirez rebuked the suspension as censorship stemming from intolerance and called for protests in support of artistic freedom.

On 13 March 2025, Rebolledo Peña rejected the AAC's request to indefinitely suspend the exhibit and Cháirez announced plans to open his exhibit again, possibly at other venues in Mexico City. On 2 April 2025, the exhibition was displayed at the Museum of Mexico City, where it was renamed – . It was suspended a few days later under the directive of the Sixth District Court in Administrative Matters in Mexico City.

Works and exhibitions

Works

Solo exhibitions

Multi-artist exhibitions Amexica|Institut Culturel du Mexique (Paris)

Visites Inesperades''Fundació Vila Casas