My practice has unfolded via performative works and practices that deal with text, lan- guage, sound and poetry. What brings these media together, is that I work around generating, embod- ying, and proposing my own personal sense of being trans. I perform work that either allures or challenges the viewess gaze, aiming to foster a search for love and belonging.
The value of drag performance as means for storytelling:
As a starting point, I mainly create performances as a way to operate within the traditions of contempo- rary storytelling. Within these performances, I use the typology and methods of drag performance as it is a format capable of editing the images through which one has built a sense of identity. Practicing what drag can entail, is a way of the self to perform new meanings within a society. In all means, drag enables me to inscribe myself in the heritage of a practice that has historically reflected upon queer- ness. I engage with drag as a framework to explore the relationship between performing arts and the authenticity of both my gender expression and gender identity. In such a way, through drag I delve into personal memories to compose my sense of transness in the eyes of contemporary art practices.
Lip-syncing as a method:
My recent performances are presented in the format of lip-syncing to my own spoken voice. By lip-syn- cing to my voice - and not the voice of another artist- I invest in the abstraction of conventional unders- tandings of drag. This way of working with drag, defies both my role as a performer and the audience!s understanding of drag traditions. Such tension is the context from which I elaborate my narratives.
In addition to the conceptual implications of lip-syncing to my own voice, I aim to reposition this method on an introspective level. I therefore lip-sync to narratives to cast a bond with the audience, introducing them to my personal need to belong. In line with writing a story, I carefully select my words to script a narrative that enhances the assimilation of poetic queer images that I lean on from literature, theory and popular culture. For example, I employ linguistic strategies where I charge an object with a queer frame of reference, such as referring to my high heels as mountains, myself as a deer, and the stage as a de- sert, a garden, a forest or a boat. These choices challenge the audience's perception, claiming from them an instant sense of active participation in the act of reshaping my gender identity as a collective endeavor.
Personal memories:
The stories I work with depart from my own memories. Using the personal as a reference is crucial for my work. It brings elements of vulnerability that help the audience access my practice, who are provi- ded with different ways of entering the work through the personal, the anecdotal, or the narrative. I am inspired by the literature of Magic Realism, as a format that constantly distorts binaries such as time and space, to decrease the distinction in between the real and the imagined. Thus, I elaborate my na- rratives through an economy of memories, my present body and future aspirations, as a rhythm from which to formulate on my sense of belonging.
Additionally, working with the embodiment of memories has the capacity of reshaping my own identity. Many of the memories I work with took place in the countryside of Valencia, where I grew up on a farm with my biological family. As a reference to my childhood, I bring elements of Mediterranean nature into my performances, placing my cultural and family heritage in the work. In this sense, I merge my family’s identity and Spanish culture with the audience, to aspire to insert my transness into those past times where my queerness was not acknowledged. Performing my work implies a vital and ongoing process of reshaping my life.
Costume design and beauty:
Costumes and beauty operate as glue for my practice. They connect me with my work on a deep intuitive level. On a primal visual layer, I make use of these elements to allure an audience. The characterization of myself has evolved in parallel to the assertiveness gained on my narratives. Nowadays, it has consciously expanded into the research aspect of my work. For my recent performances I elaborate on costumes which individually evoke a specific sensation on my body in combination with clear visual in- tentions. I then wear the complete costume (including wigs and make-up) to access a body from where to develop both the textual and somatic aspects that compose each performance. In this way, costumes function as key elements in my studio research, as much as a determination in the way in which I can operate on stage. This has made me understand the somatic implications of my visual aesthetics, as well as the sculptural propositions implicit on the usage of costumes. In this sense, I am raising the ef- fects of costumes within my practice, as for them to expand as sculptures of my body and heritage, in combination with my own personal research on transness.
Research as an embodied practice:
My work has evolved in parallel to my personal understanding of transness. This has formulated an as- similation of research as an embodied practice. In this sense, all the elements I work with (language, memories, sound, costumes, etc) aim to generate deep changes within myself and the audience. I be- lieve that by embodying my research, I am to convey art as a poetic experience from where to trans- gress the fixations of identity politics. To work with embodiment as a transformative tool is a way to co- llectively transcend the codes that determine the experience of the self.