Cabello/Carceller: A Voice for Erauso. Epilogue for a Trans Time

For this art show Cabello/Carceller use installation, performance, fictional accounts, and video to question the hegemonic codes of representation in visual practices and propose critical alternatives. For “A Voice for Erauso. Epilogue for a Trans Time“, the artists have created a new “portrait” of Erauso, who is called into question by a gallery of new transfigures.

In this case, the project started with the artists’ encounter with a portrait that is as fascinating as it is unusual: the painting that (probably) Juan van der Hamen made of Catalina de Erauso dressed as a lieutenant of the Spanish colonial navy in 1626-8 and which today belongs to the Kutxa collection. Erauso, who was born in Donostia in 1592 and was assigned female sex and given the name Catalina, is often better known as “the Lieutenant Nun”.

“The portrait of Erauso as a man could be considered one of the first “trans” portraits in the history of Baroque art,  although that notion is anachronistic since it did not exist until the 19th century” – said the curator.