“AllTogether”, the collective exhibition of Tom of Finland Foundation in Venice

The group exhibition, supported by Diesel, will open in Venice on 23rd April, which will present the permanent collection of the Foundation to the public for the first time outside of Los Angeles.

Tom of Finland, an artist known for his homoerotic illustrations and drawings, would have turned 102 on 8th May. On the occasion of this anniversary and the departing Venice Biennale , the Tom of Finland Foundation and The Community have curated AllTogether, a group exhibition supported by Diesel that will present the permanent collection of the Foundation to the public for the first time outside of Los Angeles.

The exhibition is a journey into the past, as well as a tale of the events and stories of queer artists, many of whom are forced to suffer discrimination and false representations due to the nature of their creations. It was the Foundation, born in 1984 with the initial aim of preserving and promoting Tom’s work, to protect their works. Worried that their works might be forgotten or destroyed after their death, many erotic artists of the time, who often worked under anonymity, decided to donate them to the Tom of Finland Foundation knowing that it would be carefully archived and preserved. And in fact, in over thirty years, it has built the largest collection of LGBTQ + art in the world.

Today, AllTogether gives new space to that community of artists, recognizing the work done by the Foundation in protecting freedom of expression.

AllTogether will be inaugurated at Studio Cannaregio in Venice, on 23rd April, coinciding with the opening weekend of the Venice Biennale. A second and different exhibition will open at The Community Center in Paris on 8th May. Both will be open to the public until 26th June. The two exhibitions include more than two hundred works of art from the 1940s to the present day.

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Published: 29th April 2022

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