Valiente Pastel
Valiente Pastel (b. 1989), is a Costa Rican visual artist working primarily with collage, painting, and mixed media. His practice focuses on queerness, eroticism, vulnerability, and class struggle. He often uses recycled or found materials such as vintage porn magazines, discarded prints, or everyday objects, which he intervenes and transforms. Pastel is interested in rescuing what has been forgotten, thrown away, or deemed inappropriate, and turning it into something intimate, poetic, and provocative.
Pastel’s work is both personal and political. Through the human figure, often floating, swimming, or defying gravity, he explores ideas of liberation, resistance, and identity. He is drawn to moments of contradiction: beauty and discomfort, fragility and strength, desire and shame. He sees art as a space to reclaim narratives that have been erased or silenced, especially within queer and marginalized communities.
Pastel has exhibited in independent spaces and cultural centers in Costa Rica, and continues to develop his artistic practice while building spaces for dialogue, experimentation, and collective care. He believes in the power of art to challenge, to heal, and to connect.
Featured Works
