Out Loud: LGBTQIA+ Visibility in NEPA
In partnership with the NEPA Pride Project, the Sordoni Art Gallery is pleased to announce a call for art. This community exhibition will be projected in the gallery to accompany PULSE Nightclub: 49 Elegies by John Gutoskey, on view from June 12 to August 2, 2026.
PULSE Nightclub: 49 Elegies
PULSE Nightclub: 49 Elegies is a series made by artist John Gutoskey to honor and commemorate the 49 individuals massacred at the LGBTQ Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016. Gutoskey uses symbols that are personal to him and his experience as a gay man, and combines them with other cultural and spiritual iconography that are more universally understood to create the 49 visual elegies or poems.
-John Gutoskey鈥淎lthough I did not know any of the victims personally, I felt an overwhelming sense of anger followed by a broad feeling of loss and an almost metaphysical sadness that this had happened to the LGBTQ community; that it had happened inside what was supposed to be a safe, sacred queer space; and that it had happened to a minority within a minority, as it was Latin night at PULSE Nightclub.鈥�
-Sarah Rose Sharp, Hyperallergic June 2018鈥淒espite playing across a range of imagery and palettes, the final presentation is extremely unified, successfully presenting a crowd of individuals. Gutoskey鈥檚 tribute is as vibrant and beautiful, and shot through with chaos, as the victims whose lives and bodies were broken to pieces two years ago 鈥� and perhaps offers those who continue to live with the tragedy a visual language with which to express their grief.鈥�