Information
Very Latin American images, very incorrect images. This exhibition of Revista Balam focuses on the Latin American Fantasía of its latest issue N7. We see here a summary through different axes that delve into the delights of artists who manifest in their identity and gender determination an act of freedom.
La Isla (Cuba): A tribute to the greatest Cuban queer writer Reynaldo Arenas and the Island as a paradigmatic place of desire. Gardens: Erotic and affective encounters that take place in “sinful” environments. Beauties: Visual questions about the hegemonic notion of beauty. Morpheus: Oneiric hallucinations, memories of unconsciousness that lodge in dreams. Dreams that become realities. Cocktails: Mixologies around the viral. Stigmas and prejudices about HIV/AIDS, traumas and addictions. And finally Charites: reviewing the archive of the “Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina”. Girls and their chosen families going through moments of joy, intimacy and above all resistance.
These axes establish a relationship between photography and the stories that “do not exist” for the heteronormative and patriarchal society. We are committed here to create and contextualize images that visit and rescue the past, present and future of Latin American marginal photography. This is why La fantasía queer latinoamerican is a single whole, or at least that’s how we want to interpret it, it is a collective of politically incorrect people; a minority that is continuously resisting the mandates and injustices of these vast wet, sweaty, hot, dry and cold lands, where forbidden desires slip away and hidden pleasures overflow among the norms.
Fantasía as a landscape and escape that society denied us the right to be free, to live without the burden of prejudice. The artists in this exhibition announce that the unreal and the strange are part of our desires and the nourishment of our illusions. We gather la Fantasía as an answer to the marginalization and hypocrisy of the established orders. A scandalous, sinful fantasy, free of guilt and repression.
It is always said that there are many ways to live photography, in this case we show that there is only one way to live it and that is by resisting.
It is here, then, where la Fantasía can exist.
Balam is an independent contemporary photography magazine based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We cover themes that have to do with minorities, dissidences and their struggles. At the same time we propose to transform, make visible, reinvent and invent themes that enter into dialogue with the current discourses in Latin America around social, cultural and political issues from an anti-hegemonic stance and with a poetic and critical effect in photography.
Based in Buenos Aires (Argentina), Balam is a magazine that gathers contributions from Latin American photographers around dissident practices, tactics of resistance and the communities that invent them. Through texts and images, each issue generates a critical and poetic dialogue about contemporary photography.
Exhibition
Alejandro Gonzalez, Alessandro Bo, Ana Vallejo, Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina, Beto Gutiérrez, Brenda Turnnidge, Camila Falcão, Carlos Herrera, Dana Vitorino, Davi de Jesus do Nascimento, Eleana Konstantellos, Iara Chemes, José Ney, Juan Brenner, Leonardo Escalante, Loreley Ritta, Manuel Castillo, Maria Eugenia Chellet, Mina Bárcenas, Norma Sandoval, Omar Gámez, Rafaelly de la Conga Rosa, Richard Moszka, Rodrigo Masina Pinheiro & Gal Cipreste Marinelli, Sebastian Gherre, Shelli Weiler, Zaida González Rios.
Curated by Salomé Burstein and Luis Juárez
Screening
Alejandro Kuropatwa, Alexander Ikhide, Alexia Zúñiga, Antonio Rodriguez, Asafe Ghalib, Dagurke, Mdanielapr & Endi Ruiz, Daniel Mebarek, Diego Moreno, Elea Jeanne Schmitter, Emil Lombardo, Emmanuel Manini, Gaspar Iwaniura Lorge, Graham Martin, Igor Furtado & Labo Young, Javier Hirschfeld, Jeronimo Rivero, Karla Read, Koral Carballo, Leonardo Almao, Lucas Pagès, Luciana Demichelis, Maximiliano Tineo, Matias Maroevic, Melba Arellano, Miguel Peña, Omar Pérez, Paula de Abrantes, Silvestre Contreras, Smith, Theó Maxime Petit
Curated by Mariano Bocanegra and Luis Juárez
