São Paulo Art Biennial Will Feature Transvestite and Transsexual Artists

06/16/2014 - 09h56

When he dressed as the Virgin Mary in a performance, Peruvian artist Giuseppe Campuzano portrayed what he understood as centuries of history that ignored the existence of sexual identities other than the Catholic Church's standards.

A philosopher and drag queen who died last year at the age of 44, Campuzano used his made-up face to lead a list of artists of one of the most controversial groups in the next São Paulo Biennial, which begins in September.

In the exhibit announced as the Biennial of "transgression," "transcendence" and "transsexuality," many artists from countries such as Peru, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Israel and Brazil compare today's many religious beliefs to the dissolution of frontiers between man and woman.

"This is something that summarizes our contemporary condition," says Britain's Charles Esche, the curator of the SP Biennial. "Art shows us that this absolute masculine-feminine dichotomy doesn't reflect the way that we actually experience reality."

It is also an idea that reflects the latest fashion in pop culture, which has led the representatives of a more ambiguous sexuality to be celebrities and heralds of what is an almost plurisexual avant-garde.

People like American drag queen RuPaul, actress Laverne Cox (the first transsexual to be on the cover of Time magazine), Brazilian model Lea T. and the bearded German singer Conchita Wurst are among the leaders of the new wave.

And the visual arts embrace this trend in somewhat perverse ways. In the case of the SP Biennial, exhibiting the marginal production of Latin Americans who created their works in the context of political and social repression reinforces the trend, but also shows that it has always been a cultural issue.

In this point, throughout his life, Campuzano built the "Transvestite Museum," a collection of objects related to characters who have been excluded from history from colonial times to the present days.

Sergio Zevallos, of Peru, has already been confirmed in the SP Biennial - he dresses as the Virgin Mary and other biblical characters in places linked to the maintenance of strict gender divisions, such as military quarters.

Religion and sex also clash in the works of Brazil's Virginia de Medeiros. Her movie, which will be featured in the exhibit, tells the true story of a transvestite who became a minister after a traumatic experience.

Works like the staging of the Last Supper in brothels, done by the Chilean duo Las Yeguas del Apocalípsis, and the naïf paintings of Mexico's Nahum Zenil which display himself naked in parodies of biblical passages, are likely to enter the SP Biennial supported by this new spirit of acceptance.

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

Read the article in the original language