Los Hijos de Sodoma: Daniel Gasol
On the occasion of Loop City Screen 2026, ADN Galeria presents "Los Hijos de Sodoma" by Daniel Gasol. This video work can be seen at ADN Galeria until November 30th.
Lxs hijxs de Sodoma is an investigation into the relationship between desire, authority and representation. The work takes as its starting point a specific event: in 2014, the recording of a gay scene for an adult film produced by Bel-Ami was sanctioned in Italy on the grounds that the use of official uniforms in a sexual representation violated existing legislation concerning the prestige and use of state symbols.
Building on this precedent, the work shifts the question from censorship to the limits of representation. What can a body wearing an official uniform do? At what point does a uniform cease to function as an institutional sign and become a performative device? Where does the boundary between fiction, representation and a potential legal offence lie?
The work features two characters wearing official uniforms belonging to different branches of the Italian state, reproduced in accordance with the prescribed models. The research incorporates an analysis of Italian regulations governing the use of uniforms, insignia and official emblems, carefully delineating what the law permits and what it prohibits. The work positions itself precisely at a legal boundary, approaching the line without crossing it. The action deliberately avoids any representation of official authority: there are no arrests, identity checks, orders, simulated duties or exercise of public functions. The uniform remains a visual sign stripped of its institutional function, becoming a medium through which to interrogate the relationships between power, masculinity and desire in the practice of cruising.
In parallel, the work develops a cartography of gestural codes, understood as a system of non-verbal communication historically developed by people seeking to recognise one another in contexts of secrecy. Glances, pauses, distances, oblique approaches, nods, synchronisations and subtle shifts in position are analysed as the smallest units of a bodily language transmitted informally across generations.
Lxs hijxs de Sodoma thus brings two systems of codification into confrontation: the state's normative language, embodied in the uniform, legislation and the limits governing its use, and the invisible language of desire, constructed through barely perceptible gestures.
