Kissing icons.

• Author: Armstrong, Bob
• Position: Gay artist Alex Donis, Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco, California - Brief Article

San Francisco

Cesar Chavez kissed Che Guevara? There's nothing in the history books to prove it. But that doesn't bother gay Latino artist Alex Donis. He has constructed a series of colorful Plexiglas panels of improbable kisses.

The kissing couples include Pope John Paul II with Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus with Lord Rama, John F. Kennedy with Fidel Castro, Christopher Columbus with an Aztec warrior, Adolf Hitler with a skeletal man, the Dalai Lama with Mao Tse Tung, Martin Luther King Jr. with a Ku Klux Klansman, and Madonna with Mother Teresa.

Donis calls his exhibit My Cathedral. It was displayed in the heart of San Francisco's Latino community. The series, which evokes stained-glass cathedral windows, turned the storefront Galeria de la Raza into a store-front church from August 19 through September 27.

My Cathedral received mixed reviews. Some praise its transgressions. "Alex Donis's work trounces across the barriers that divide love from hate, black from white, East from West, the sacred from the profane, and the physical from the spiritual," writes Coco Fusco, an artist and cultural theorist.

Others say it is blasphemy, an insult to the religious and political figures who spent their lives--and some who gave their lives--in the pursuit of justice and peace.

On two occasions, vandals threw rocks through the windows, damaging the panels of Che with Chavez and Jesus embracing Lord Rama. The damaged art was valued at about $5,000 per...