Transborda

This exhibition presents the production of ten Brazilian artists about the trans universe, thus promoting a reflection about gender identity, an issue that grows in relevance in contemporary society. Transborda comprises photographs, videos, paintings, sculptures and performances, including a show by the Ceará based music group Veronica Decide Morrer, during the opening on October 3rd.

According to curator Yuri Firmeza (b. 1982, São Paulo), the conceptual theme of the exhibition is the body and the relations it establishes as form of resistance. The body explored here is political and ethical, critical to the hegemonic powers and forms of knowledge, a body that erodes the dominant model of body, male and heterossexual, and that understands the gender as a performance in itself.

The highlight of the show is the video installation “Sergio e Simone” (2009/2014), by Virgínia de Medeiros. The work was part of the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014) and was awarded at the 18th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil with the ICCo Residency Prize. It portraits Simone, a transvestite that used to live in a ruined house in Salvador, Bahia. As many of the residents of her unprivileged neighbourhoods, she was a drug user. About one month after the filming, she has a convulsion over a crack overdose, followed by a mystical frenesi where she believes to have met God, who saved her from death. After this experience, Simone abandons her condition as transvestite, returns to her parent’s house, retakes her baptism name, Sérgio, and, in an outburst of fanaticism, believes to be one of the people sent by God to save mankind.