About

Leo’s BOOKs available here

Leo Herrera is a queer Mexican artist renowned for his exploration of Queer and immigrant experiences through the lenses of sex, technology, and history. Herrera's work often centers on themes of disease and stigma, particularly HIV and documents Queer “utopia.”

Herrera's acclaimed series, Fathers (2015-2020), is a sci-fi documentary that envisions a world where AIDS never existed. Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as "a raucous and occasionally heartbreaking what-if," the series' behind-the-scenes documentary won an Emmy Award in 2018.

During the 2022 Mpox (monkeypox) outbreak, Herrera’s online activism and podcast drew recognition from The White House, leading to his participation in Mpox Task Force workshops, where he advocated for immigrant and POC communities. His commitment to “blood equality” and advocacy for lifting the FDA ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men is reflected in his films exhibited at the American University Museum and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

An early, staunch advocate for PrEP, the HIV prevention pill, Herrera was featured in New York Magazine's landmark 2014 article "The End of HIV" and the GLAAD Media Award-winning documentary The Truvada Revolution. In 2011, he co-founded The Sero Project, addressing HIV criminalization. His short documentaries contributed to the “HIV is Not a Crime” movement and have been showcased at the United Nations AIDS Conference. He has created HIV prevention and Queer history campaigns for The GLBT Historical Society, ACT UP NYC, Visual AIDS and the SF Health Department. Herrera has been a fixture in Queer nightlife, creating visuals for the largest LGBTQ celebrations in the world. 

Herrera's media platform, Herrera Images and Words, reaches over a million viewers monthly through a newsletter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. During the COVID-19 lockdown, his viral "meme essays" contextualized the pandemic within AIDS history, establishing him as a prominent voice in LGBTQ social media with a diverse following of activists, celebrities, and politicians. His satirical TikTok, featuring political takes and "Gay Brown Jesus," has garnered over 20 million views. His long-form essays on Substack explore Queer nostalgia, celebrity and sex. His viral poems like “Dear Baby Gay,” and “Seaglass” have appeared in protest signs, murals, and eulogies and in 2023, "The Unmistakable Softness" was adapted to music by the New York Gay Men’s Chorus. Herrera has self-published an anthology of his poems and social media work in POST (2023) and Analog Cruising (2024). 

Herrera’s work has been integrated into the curricula of Stanford, California State University, and Sonoma State University, and featured in festivals and museums including Frameline Film Festival, The Leslie Lohman Museum. He contributes to MIT Technology Review, Slate, Huffington Post, The Advocate, and Gaytimes, and his insights on Queer history and disease are cited by The New York Times, Politico, I-D, Vice, and Surface.