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Renata Carvalho
Artist Snapshots 2 – 03.28.2023
8am PT / 11am ET / 5pm GMT
Graduating in Social Sciences. Founder of Monart (National Movement of Trans Artists), of the "Trans Representativity Manifesto" (which aims at the inclusion of travesti/trans bodies in the spaces of art creation and calls for a break from the practice of Trans Fake - cisgender artists who play trans/travesti characters).
As a transpologist (a trans anthropologist), she has studied the travesti/trans body since 2007, when she became a volunteer prevention agent for STIs, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and hepatitis by the municipal health secretary of Santos, working specifically with travesti and transsexuals in prostitution, the same year of her travesti perception.
This transpology opens the discussion to the social, media, criminal, hyper sexualizing, pathological, religious and moral construction that permeates trans/travesti bodies, where art, and consequently, artists were/are also responsible for the construction of this common sense imagery.
The artist places her travesti body as subject and object of research, debating/denouncing the absence of these bodies in art spaces.
Travesti is a female socio and political gender identity, prevalent in Latin America.
Artist Snapshot:
Manifesto transpofágico
"Today I decided to dress in my own skin. My travesti body."
Renata "dresses" herself with her own body to narrate the historicity of her corporeality. Renata feeds on her "transcestrality". She eats it, digests it. A transpo-phagia. The Travesti Body as an experiment, a guinea pig. A manifesto of a Travesti Body. Sign flashes TRAVESTI. TRAVESTI. TRAVESTI.