“Sureando el cuerpo”. Lia García (La Novia Sirena): Desmenuzar la memoria. Archivo Afectivo Mis XXy años

On 11 September at 7 p.m. Hangar will host the fifth edition of the “Sureando el cuerpo” cycle, organised by the artist in residence Lucía Egaña, on this occasion with a special guest from Mexico, Lia García.

Shred the memory. Archivo Afectivo Mis XXy años, will be a close encounter and dialogue through the body and the energy of the invited bodies. This videoperformance materializes the affective relationships that were built from the collective and public celebration My XXy years in 2014 as part of the October Trans* BCN in collaboration with the Squat Can Vies where it took place. This visual, sonorous and performatic archive is built like a bridge that, through affection and tenderness, will lead us to activate the collective memory of a trans*figured process that has expanded in time, as the ephemeral of all performance. This affective encounter transcends memories and allows them to flow, until they are transformed again into possibility and into multiple realities; realities that touch, listen to and return to another space of resistance, again in the memory of the skin.Four years after the performance Mis XXy años, presented at the October Trans BCN 2014, Lia La Novia Sirena returns from Mexico to give testimony of that affective encounter that comes out of her pedagogical project Mis XXy años (My XXy years) (2012) a process that involves the public celebration of her experience of transition from the appropriation and resignification of the Mexican ritual of the quinceañera. A festivity built by the patriarchy and popular culture whose objective is that every woman when she turns fifteen must be presented to society as a new body that is prepared to obey the mandates of hegemonic femininity. Lia, from the re-reading of this ritual and the work with the affections that break the colonial discourse of the proxemic invites us to ask ourselves and to answer a series of questions expanded over time and that propose other narratives of the trans* experience, femininity, seduction and the trans*gression of feminist artistic practices located in Latin America. What are the political and pedagogical implications of a trans* celebration? Which bodies matter and which affections transcend the private? Is the celebration a political protest that questions the system? What do I get when I play? How do I affect myself from and with the trans* experience?

Lia García (La Novia Sirena), 1989, was born in Mexico City, where she currently lives. She studied Pedagogy and Visual Arts at the Unviversidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She is an activist and defender of the human rights of trans* people. Her artistic projects have focused on building affective bridges between the trans* experience and society through performance in public space. The work with the archetypes of femininity, ritual, feminist politics of affection and care, as well as radical pedagogy, is what nourishes Lia’s work and at the same time constitutes a new political commitment to achieve a collective transformation of gender far from a medium of prejudice and violence. Her work has been shown at national and international performance festivals such as Octubre Trans Barcelona, EXTRA!, Un ciclo-El palomar and Miradas Otras.

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