“Theater, yours is pure theater”: Visual Transvestite Memory in the Tropics (1984-2020)

Abstract

In this research, the author proposed to review and study the visual memory of transvestite, transformist and drag queen practices in the context of the Colombian Caribbean, and especially of Barranquilla, contrasting them with his personal archive, having as a background a popular culture that has influenced them through their greatest form of expression: carnivals. Through a reading oriented in different directions and, based on thematic spaces (LGBTI events, Barranquilla Carnival events, activists and writers, artists, etc.) the author constituted an expanded visual archive. The evidence showed the existence of approximately fifteen (15) personal/institutional archives, and a strong link to his personal archive. The paper also describes the tensions that were common in the transit of these practices when facing with resistance the onslaught of different forms of violence and discrimination, such as homophobia and transphobia. The approach used by the author shows the emergence of this view in current times, since there is no document archive on this subject in the region, and the demands from the bodies based on these practices have not been made visible or recognized. It is from the viewpoint of the LGBTI collective and his own that the author values, reinterprets, reaffirms and reconstructs its space of enunciation to speak to others. He also proposes the valuation of an artistic legacy committed for more than thirty years, which remains free and desirable in the face of social exclusion. An archive of a collective wish