Photo exhibition Les corps incorruptibles, from photographer Emilie Hallard, and the videoclips from Mar Llop’s documentary project Famílies Trans* are the new exhibitions available at Barcelona LGTBI Center, that can be visited with free entrance until 26th April as a part of new programme cycle on “Corporalities”.
Les corps incorruptibles presents a series of 31 portraits of nude individuals showing their bodies in a wide range of interlinked diversities, accompanied by texts and reflections from Judith Butler, Antonio Centeno, Virginie Despentes, Daria Marx and Nicole Seck, among other people.
“The 21st century still drags on with the same beauty standards of the last century. Those of a young, white, thin, ethereal and heterosexual woman. Beauty, or rather a woman’s first commercial asset; is a passport to a happy marriage, professional success and social recognition Both women and men are bombarded with an infinite amount of photoshopped images, which has alienated them and also driven them on a search for an unattainable ideal beauty, which only leads to frustration and self-hatred. A blinded population starved by its regimes, which becomes terribly tractable and obedient
Refusing the norm is to choose, as from the vulnerable side as the enthusiastic one, to be incorruptible, faithful to oneself, honest, punk in front of a capitalist system that fathers monstrous children of uniformity and consumerism, all made from the same post-colonial and patriarchal mould”, states the author, Emilie Hallard (1979, France).
The project, for her, is based on a refusal of the norms, and a feeling of love and desire for bodies”of all ages, sizes, genders and colour”. Hallard has been deconstructing “beauty standards, beginning a quest for honesty, empowerment, acceptance and self-confidence, while gathering the words of… [her] peers and taking a tender look at them”.
These incorruptible bodies are “a declaration of feminist, queer and anti-racist love”, for “the diverse, the unlikely, the ambiguous, the androgynous, the non-obvious and the non-binary”, according to the author herself.
The exhibition officially opens on Thursday, 10 February at 6 pm, with a round table entitled “El cos heteronormatiu i altres contes racistes i capacitistes” [The heteronormative body and other racist and ableist tales], taking part in which will be:
Émilie Hallard, a queer photographer and publisher who works on the diversity of bodies and their representations.
Lizette Nin, an Afrodescendent visual artist and researcher working with issues such as black, dissident and inter-sectional activism.
Elena Prous, a columnist, blogger and activist of the Independent Life Movement.
Elektra Insogna, an activist, singer, actor and DJ.
Beside her presentation, Emilie Hallard will also be offering guided tours of the exhibition on 17 February, 11 March and 21 April at 6 pm, during which she will be explaining the background to her Les corps incorruptibles project, its creative process and development over 10 years as well as its trans-feminist and anti-racist focus.
Famílies trans*, a Mar Llop documentary
The Barcelona LGBTI Centre will also screen 11 documentary clips on the Famílies Trans* project from the photographer Mar Llop.
The project offers a portrait of 29 families who have been socialising their children according to the gender they identify with. A project that contains these video clips which can be seen on the screen, but which also include a full-feature documentary, a photo exhibition and a book which will soon be published.
“The lack of positive references on the trans collective* continues to be an outstanding issue. And if we bring trans children in the equation * the picture is even worse. How do members of a family deal with a situation where a child expresses themself in the gender they feel, a gender that is different from the one assigned to them at birth? What does it mean to transition at the age of 5 ? What a society be like outside of the male /female binarism? What doubts and fears do they awaken in their guardians? How is a transition accompanied?”, are just a few of the reflections the author raises.