LGBTQIA+ Pride Art by Geoff Staub
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Featured Work
“Sebastian: See Me, Free Me”
Acrylic on Canvas, 30x40
“Sebastian: See Me, Free Me” by Geoff Staub is a politically charged, deeply personal painting that uses the figure of St. Sebastian to condemn modern-day fascism, religious hypocrisy, and systemic violence against LGBTQIA+ people and other marginalized communities in the United States.
At the center is Sebastian, explicitly tied to the Christian martyr St. Sebastian—a Roman soldier who secretly practiced his faith, was shot with arrows, survived, and was later killed. Staub invokes Sebastian as a symbol of the “closeted” self, of resilience under persecution, and as a protector against plague, echoing how parts of the LGBTQ+ community embraced him during the AIDS crisis. Here, Sebastian becomes a stand‑in for queer people and others who are oppressed by those who claim the name “Christian” while acting in ways that betray the teachings of Jesus.
Layered text and imagery frame this central figure within a larger historical and political warning. The date “1933” points to Hitler’s rise to power and the opening of Dachau, signaling that the mechanisms of fascism—concentration camps, racist violence, state terror, and impunity—are not distant history but a mirror of current U.S. policies: immigration detention, cover‑ups, racism, and unaccountable brutality.
“1998” invokes the murder of Matthew Shepard, underscoring the ongoing reality of lethal anti‑LGBTQIA+ hatred. Phrases in German and French—“Nie Wieder” and “Plus Jamais” (“Never Again”)—taken from Holocaust memorials, confront the viewer with the failure to uphold that promise as new forms of dehumanization and mass persecution reappear.
The visual vocabulary reinforces this message: Pride colors appear not as a celebration, but as prison bars, suggesting that queer identity itself is being confined and criminalized. Barbed wire evokes concentration camps and the broader machinery of oppression and suppression.
Staub incorporates and adapts lyrics from Green Day and U2 to sharpen his critique. References to “Sieg Heil,” rewritten to target a current “fascist” leader, and phrases like “Kill All The Fags That Don’t Agree,” “I’m the Faggot America, Not Part of a Redneck Agenda,” and “Or Hypo‑Christian Bigot Agenda” call out a culture and regime that center straight, white, self‑identified Christian men while silencing, erasing, or inciting violence against others.
“Kill Your Icons” turns biblical injunctions against idolatry back on those who idolize political leaders and nationalist ideology above God, even as they persecute others “in the name of Christianity.” The quotation from U2—“Free at last, they took your life, they could not take your pride”—echoes the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and affirms that dignity, identity, and community cannot be annihilated, even by murder.
Finally, the code “194546” appears as a quiet but firm assertion of accountability: a reminder of the years marking the end of World War II and the Holocaust, the liberation of concentration camps, and the trials that held perpetrators and collaborators to account. It stands as a warning and a hope that today’s crimes against humanity, too, will one day be judged.
Altogether, “Sebastian: See Me, Free Me” is both lament and rallying cry: a visual indictment of fascism, homophobia, and “hypo‑Christian” bigotry, and an insistence on the enduring pride, resilience, and equality of all human beings.
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