(trans-)

September 7-September 22, 2007

Works by Lucienne Pereira (2004-2007) and Screening in the Project Room 3 short films.

Trans is a Latin noun or prefix meaning “across”, “beyond” or “on the opposite side [of]”. It is the relational antonym to cis, which means “on the same side [of]” or “on this side [of]”. The term is used in chemistry, defining one of the possible configurations of functional groups within a molecule. These are molecules that have the potential to change in shape according to their energy status. In molecular biology, external factors which act by binding on to a molecule are considered to act in trans fashion. In geography, places whose names begin in trans- convey the meaning “beyond” or “across” something. In astronomy, for a body to be trans is to orbit outside the orbit of the body that has the higher mass. In the context of gender and sex, trans is an umbrella term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups with tendencies that diverge from the normative gender roles that commonly, but not always, are assigned at birth. A trans woman is a person who identifies as both trans and female, irrespective of physical characteristics and assigned sex. The transmutation of species is the alteration of one species into another. In religion, transmutation is often used as a synonym of transubstantiation of the Eucharist.

This exhibition features the works of Brazilian born artist Lucienne Pereira in the gallery, and includes the screening of three short films that relate to transgender issues in the Project Room. The title was chosen alluding to connections to be found between these works, which probe into struggles of physical and simulated realities. These works share an attitude that is permissive to the possibilities and consequences of desire, and relate to a painful wanting to exist in extreme form. ‘Form’ here understood in Wittgenstein’s sense, in the Tractatus: “The form is the possibility of the structure.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by David Francis Pears, Brian McGuinness, Routledge, 2001, p. 9.

Lucienne Pereira

“Tupi, or not tupi, that is the question.” Oswald de Andrade, Antropophagous Manifesto, 1928. Born in Sao Paulo in 1963, Lucienne Pereira grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She studied art education at the Universidade Estacio de Sa, Rio de Janeiro, and later pursued independent studies of painting at The Art Students League in New York City. She obtained a BA in arts at Empire State College SUNY (2002) and later earned a MFA at the Frank Mohr Instituut, Groningen, The Netherlands (2005). Lucienne Pereira lives and works in New York. The body of work developed over the last five years living in The Netherlands and New York refers to a formal and conceptual investigation on issues of growth, adaptation and interdependency. She has explored such subject-matters creating objects and installations that trigger memories of living organisms, shantytown dwelling constructions and improvised couture. These aspire to function as systems that relate to existing interior architectural spaces (such as the studio, the gallery or the church) as symbiosis.

Lucienne Pereira’s installations are composed of elements whose propositions coexist not without struggle. These polarized environments attest the consequences of uneven development and reflect states of deep want (to be other or feel on the opposite side of). The humble and the magnificent, the feminine and the masculine, the kitsch and the refined, the physical and the incorporeal, the object and the architectonic: these incompatible assertions are taken together. The artist’s preoccupations are rooted in personal experiences of cultural displacement in three heterogeneous societies (Brazil, U.S.A., and The Netherlands).

Like many artists of her generation, Lucienne Pereira’s work is inherently connected to her cultural inventories as a Brazilian but it is a product of moving and living abroad. Like Ernesto Neto, who emphasizes the experience of walking through his sculptures, Lucienne Pereira experiments with spatial and perceptual qualities of contemporary sculpture, approaching ideas of vulnerability, determination, potential, optimism and struggle. The sculptures appear not to want to be sculptures, exploring relations with the walls, the openings and light sources of the spaces they occupy.

The corrosive aesthetic of the garbage is not. The sleekness of the machine and the now ubiquitous Louis Vuitton boutique is not. But interior spaces like the bedroom, the sawing room, the playroom are the fragmented source of household materials that are familiarly recombined and yet made badly. The main material used is textile, which carries references to skin, protection, shelter, fragility, craft, exuberance and glamour. Pereira pays careful attention to the texture of the textile that is chosen, as the optic and haptic mechanisms of perceiving texture play to trigger relations of attraction and separation that are present in nature and exploited in fashion design. The pictorial consideration of the pieces is equally important, emphasizing a conscious use of color and how the lines and forms divide in space.
The use of textile alludes to a post-colonial cornucopia of traditions with affinity to baroque ideas of ostentation and emotion. A common feature of the works is their emphasis on symbolic value, which is not dictated by logic or necessity, but at least in part, prescribed and imposed upon the viewer by some external source, hereby stressing not cognitive but affective and behavioral aspects of religious activity, dedication and belief.

Screening in the Project Room

Movimiento enérgico de la voluntad hacia el conocimiento,
posesión o disfrute de una persona o cosa
Argentina, 2004
10 min
Directors: Luján Montes and Matías Otamendi
Script: Luján Montes and Matías Otamendi
Production: Grupo Embate / Escuela de Cine CIEVYC
Director Assistant: Victoria Ruiz
Photography: Gustavo Enaola Moro, Laura Andrada
Camera: Matías Otamendi, Luján Montes
Art: Victoria Ruiz; Editor: Luján Montes
Sound: Matías Otamendi, Luján Montes
Courtesy of Luján Montes and Matías Otamendi, Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Directors’ Synopsis: Of how pleasures take form, from the social conventions to the domestication of the body: she and he act obediently.
(De como toman forma los placeres, desde las imposiciones sociales hasta la domesticación del cuerpo: ella y él actuan en obediencia.)

There is debate within the scientific community over how the process of domestication works. Some researchers give credit to natural selection, where mutations outside of human control make some members of a species more compatible to human companionship. Some researchers maintain that selective breeding rather than mutation or natural selection best explains how the process of domestication typically works. Presumably, something like a symbiotic relationship developed between humans and the domesticated subject is a precursor of this process.

The title Movimiento enérgico de la voluntad hacia el conocimiento, posesión o disfrute de una persona o cosa is taken from the definition of the word ‘desire’ as it appears in Rufino Jose Cuervo’s (1886-1893) Diccionario de construcción y régimen (1872, vol. II, pp. 1063-1064), considered by some as the first lexicon of modern Spanish language. The translation of the title in English is ‘energetic movement of the will towards the knowledge, possession or enjoyment of a person or thing’.

A traveling camera offers passionate glimpses of a couple having sex in a room of the Gondolín Hotel, a notorious dive in Buenos Aires where reportedly 30 to 40 sex workers operate and form a trans community. This sanctuary of transgression gained the attention of videoactivists such as directors Luján Montes and Matías Otamendi during the time and aftermath of the brutal Argentine socioeconomic crisis that hit bottom in 2001. The film offers a disconcerting view of the diversity of struggles and roles that take place in the interiors and margins of global capitalism.

Luján Montes (bo. 1980, Argentina) studied film direction at the CIEVYC (Centro de Investigación y Experimentación en Vídeo y Cine) graduating in 2005. She works with Matías Otamendi (bo. 1982, Argentina), who studied film direction at the Instituto de Arte Cinematografico (2000), pursued studies in philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (2000-2001), and is currently enrolled in the Visual Arts program.

Con qué la lavaré (With What Shall I Wash)
Spain, 2003
11 min
Director: María Trénor
Script: María Trénor & Joaquín Ojeda
Animation: María and Clara Trénor
Montage: Joaquín Ojeda
Sound: Joaquín Ojeda & María Trénor
Music: Anonymous (16th century)
Courtesy of Frameline Distribution, San Francisco (USA) and Producciones Tacatuca / María and Clara Trénor, Valencia (Spain)

María Trénor’s award-winning animation is a visual poem inspired by an anonymous 16th century music piece titled Con qué la lavaré. It tells the story of a day in the life of a transvestite male prostitute who walks the red-light district of Valencia (Spain) within the context of the Spanish political transition towards democracy during the 1970s. In front of the mirror, while taking off her (his) make-up and getting ready for bed, she interprets the leading soprano as she tragicomically recalls what has happened during her working day. Curious mix of Renaissance and 1970s, it is a tribute to 20th century artists like Jean Cocteau, David Hockney and Pierre et Gilles.

María Trénor (bo. Valencia, Spain 1970) works as a freelance illustrator and animator for children’s TV programs in Spain. She obtained a degree in Fine Arts from the San Carlos School of Fine Arts of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (1993) and completed a course in Classic Animation at The Edinburgh College of Art in the U.K. (2000). Her filmography includes two animation pieces: Con qué la lavaré (With What Shall I Wash), Best Short Film 35 mm Mostra de Valencia 2003, Teddy Award Best Short Film Berlin Film Festival 2004, Sundance Film Festival 2005; and D, Selection Animadrid 2001, Selection Animac Lleida 2002, Selection Premios Tirant Valencia 2002.

Brujería (Voodoo Woman)
Colombia-Cuba-Canada, 2007
32 min
Directors: Carolina Valencia and Richard O’Regan
Production: Telezam Pictures (Toronto)
Courtesy of Telezam Pictures (Toronto) and Carolina Valencia

I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me. perhaps because what is good no longer belongs to anyone, not even to the other [Borges], but rather to the language and to tradition. Otherwise. I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in the other.

Jorge Luis Borges [from “Borges and I” in El Hacedor].

Carolina Valencia (bo. Carlos Valdivieso Nougues in Cúcuta, Colombia 1956) is an independent filmmaker living in Toronto since 35 years ago. She attended Sheridan College and studied illustration. Carolina has been directing commercials and films for over 10 years. In Brujería (Voodoo Woman) Carolina Valencia tells her own story, the story of a director that is making a documentary film about Voodoo or Santería in Cuba, and ends up discovering deep personal convictions through occult practices and decides to undergo a sex change during the process.

An enlightened short long story in which the most intimate human concerns are blended with humor and realism to address complex philosophical problems, involving such literary thematic motifs as time, identity, authorship and memory. Carolina’s combination of the creative search and process with her personal essay resists classification.

Recent filmography: Las Dos Cubas (The Two Cubas) 2006; En Búsqueda de la Diosa (In Search of the Goddess), 2006.

“Spasms of the diaphragm generally offer better chances for thought than spasms of the soul.”

Walter Benjamin, The Author As Producer (1934).