Within the series Towards a Homoerotic Historiography (2013–2014) by Colombian-born artist Carlos Motta, #7 is not an artwork that immediately commands the viewer’s gaze. Often charged with erotic imagery, the series’ watercolour drawings and miniature gold-washed silver figurines are faithful recreations of pre-Columbian sculptures, ceramics, and reliefs depicting queer individuals, at times engaged in sexual relations. Towards a Homoerotic Historiography reaffirms the pre-colonial presence of queer people in Latin America by addressing the role of “the body, desire, and pleasure” in pre-Columbian societies.¹ In contrast to the more overtly sexual compositions in the series, the human-feline figure in #7 stands out for its distinctive anthropomorphic features and solitary presentation, proposing queer desire as an individual endeavour.

The inclusion of the lone #7 may seem misplaced in a series explicitly depicting acts of homoerotic sex. However, Motta’s interest in the figure may have been driven by explorations of the queer self and negotiations of desire instead of sexual engagement. The unique allure of #7 lies in the contrast between its human and feline elements, wherein its head and prominent male sexual organ are familiarly human, but its fanged mouth, whiskered face, and tail embody a feline quality. Subtle changes in tonality, made possible through the use of watercolour, soften and neutralize the impact of the figure’s expressions of aggression, giving the work an intriguingly unsettled peculiarity.

My interest in #7 grew when I found a corresponding ceramic sculpture made by Peruvian-born painter and sculptor Kukuli Velarde, another artist I was writing about at the time. Within their practices, both artists draw from fragments of material culture made by pre-Columbian societies throughout Latin America —including the Maya, Moche, Tairona, and Tumaco-La Tolita.² Although, to my knowledge, Motta and Velarde have never collaborated, I was drawn to their respective, nearly simultaneous, and independently developed inclinations to create artworks referencing the same pre-Columbian sculpture.

Considering that pre-Columbian art encompasses works from 10,000 BCE to the 15th century, damaged figures with missing limbs, chipped silhouettes, and faded pigments are a common sight within the field. Though devised with a different objective in mind, projects such as Motta’s watercolour drawings tend to provide slightly clearer images of some of these pre-Columbian works.³ The task of finding, documenting, and recreating these artworks requires Motta to assume the role of an anthropologist, historian, objective documentarian, and curator, guided by an interest in the work’s possible associations to queerness. As a result, Motta’s compositions feel clinical yet decidedly purposeful, as if they were visual translations of the referenced works, or pieces catalogued by an archivist—a feeling accentuated by titles that enumerate the series.

I do not claim to be an expert on pre-Columbian art, but after taking several courses in the field throughout my undergraduate career, I was surprised I had never come across works by the Tairona or Tumaco-La Tolita, pre-Columbian cultures that Motta and Velarde cite as creators of the human-feline figure. I have done significant research to find any trace of information on the referenced pre-Columbian work, but there is no record of it within a museum collection, academic publication, or exhibition. After exhausting my university’s academic resources, and scrolling through pages of Google image search results, I found a digital image of the sculpture presenting the feline figure in the exact same position as #7.⁴ In Motta’s version, two marks suggesting the figure’s furrowed brow disappear, and the work loses its marbled surface appearance, opting for a white, matte finish. The artist emphasizes a sixth finger on the figure’s right hand, and unifies the freestanding feline-whiskered cheeks above the upper lip.

Where many pre-Columbian works understandably display symptoms of their age, the human-feline sculpture referenced by Motta’s #7 seems to be amazingly intact. Further complicating the work’s pre-Columbian attribution is this image’s associations with questionable sources, such as decade-old Pinterest threads, a medical article about Paul of Aegina’s surgical methods for preternatural fingers, and a spiritual website called “The Libertarian,” which cites the work as a “Pre-Columbian reptilian being with six fingers and tail; of Tumaco, Colombia.”⁵ Although I originally intended to confirm the work’s pre-Columbian attribution, my thesis research became inconveniently unsettled by questions of authenticity and the unreliability of digital archives, all because of a charming humanoid sculpture.⁶

For the time being, the pre-Columbian authenticity of the work that inspired #7 will remain unclear, but Motta’s objective to establish a pre-colonial queer history is real and genuine. Through Towards a Homoerotic Historiography, the artist asks us to consider Latin American queer desire as a historical reality by re-embedding pre-Columbian works into our art historical canon, and reconciling these figures with their homoerotic context. With enough resources and collected fragments, I hope to reveal more about the figures that inspired Motta’s series by continuing to unravel the provenance of the human-feline figure, and write art history from a perspective that accentuates queer narratives instead of hiding their existence.