Gabe Cortese (Key West, Florida, b. 1994; lives and works in Rhode Island) received his BFA in 2017 and his MFA in 2021 from the University of Central Florida. Cortese is a Painter and Draftsman, interested in intersectional identities, queer mythologies, and the history of the male body in art. As a Queer Latino man, Cortese explores and challenges what it means to exist with the pressures, expectations, and roles projected onto him throughout his life. Using fantasy and drama to his advantage, Cortese pulls from his childhood experience growing up near DisneyWorld in Orlando to appropriate illustrative language to navigate through his own mysterious stories in his imaginative world. Ranging from soccer culture to queer cruising culture, Cortese composes melodramatic images that explore each scenario through the lens of queerness and Latinidad.