Presentation: Tuesday, June 14 2022
Performance and Installation
Length : 45 minutes
SANGUAZA is a collective spiritual ritual. When I was able to wash myself for the first time after my top surgery, I felt that I was reborn and that it was my baptism. I felt like I gave birth to myself with this surgery. My friend Héctor was accompanying me, bathing me in those sacred waters that got dirty very quickly, while tubes came out of my body filling the containers of the drains with blood. There was no boundary between my body and the fluids. It’s the beauty of liquids, it is a connective space. We know amniotic liquid before we know air, and if we get out of the liquid too early, we don’t know life. The fluid is a liminal space where it is unclear where I end and the rest begins. Is the blood that comes out of my body part of my body? Where does it stop being me? What is mine and what is yours? I believe that everything is ours and everything passes through us, we are part of a much larger organism. SANGUAZA is a proposal to stop believing that we are separable, that my body ends here and yours begins here; that my emotions end here and yours begin here, that my story ends here and yours begins here. My body is a collective territory and the ritual of SANGUAZA was to pass through you and allow you to pass me through.
In itself, my top surgery was possible thanks to a fundraiser, my body was modified thanks to each person who made a donation, to the people who took care of me after the surgery, my body depended on all the people who loved me until I was able to love myself. This body is yours too. This experience is yours.
Every person in my life has led me to this. Every moment has led me to this. The day of the performance, I cried a lot, seeing Hector’s photos displayed on large towels. I never thought I would experience happiness in my life. It was not even imaginable. I never thought that changing a part of my body would make me feel so peaceful. The texts that accompany the performance, fragments of my notebooks from 2015 to 2022, ask again and again, how much of my psychological suffering was dysphoria? And I feel more than ever that access to health services for trans people really saves lives.
Cinco días después de la mastectomía y la vida es bella. Los días de recuperación son suaves, rodeadx de las personas que amo y que me aman en la ciudad. Es un momento de celebración, es la gran cosecha. Tengo relaciones enriquecedoras, florecientes, llenas de amor, intimidad y confianza; nos cuidamos por elección. Me siento afortunadx de haber podido preguntar a tantxs cercanxs “¿puedes cuidarme después de mi cirugia?” y de escuchar a tanta gente diciendo que sí. Estoy orgullosx de haber podido crear el tipo de relaciones y de vida que quería y que quiero con estas personas. Creé mis familias y mi hogar. Estos días tranquilos de recuperación me hacen sentir que no necesito nada más; Tengo todo lo que necesito aquí y ahora. Lo de mas es superfluo. Senti el agua sobre mi piel sin la molestia de un traje de bano. Mi cuerpo es el hogar mas hermoso, soy mi propio hogar, y me maravillo de sentirme completamente a gusto. Vuelvo a flotar boca arriba, en este liquido amniotico que es el mar, y vuelvo a nacer, cuantas veces he renacido, cuantas veces mas voy a renacer, cuantas veces he muerto para renacer, y vuelvo a nacer, cuantas veces he renacido, cuantas veces mas voy a renacer, cuantas veces he muerto para renacer.
Two days after my top surgery I was able to wash myself for the first time. We filled the bathtub on the balcony and Héctor helped me take a bath and wash my hair, and took pictures of me. It was the first time I could touch my new chest. I felt that I had been reborn and that it was my baptism. I felt like I gave birth to myself with this surgery. And Héctor was accompanying me, bathing me in sacred water that got dirty very quickly, while tubes came out of my body filling the containers of the drains with blood. There was no boundary between my body and the fluids. It’s the beauty of fluids, it is a connective space. We know amniotic liquid before we know air, and if we get out of the liquid too early, we don’t know life.
I emptied the bloody fluids from the drains every 12 hours for 11 days and kept it all in a jar in my freezer. I didn’t know why I was keeping them yet. One night, I saw Tatsumi and Héctor and they asked me, “What are you going to do with the blood? We were talking about it.” At the same time, I did not obtain, as always, the grant for which I had applied, and I rejected collaborations with cultural institutions that did not offer me decent working conditions. One day I was with Rai and I told them about it, that I was no longer going to wait for the approval of cultural institutions to create, when together with my friends, we have all the talent, knowledge and creativity to collaborate. Rai told me that their Jacobo Toledo studio was available whenever I wanted to do whatever I wanted.
When I saw the photos Héctor took of me for the first time, I cried. I saw with my own eyes my total embodied relief. I never thought that changing a part of my body would make me feel so peaceful. I went back to the sea, to the town in Nayarit where I felt good for the first time in my life in 2016, and where I later lived for a year. I closed cycles in the sea, with my mother, with Julio, with my new body.
And so began the process of creating the performance that we always called SANGUAZA. Tatsumi helped me in the first brainstorm; I made a real proposal to Rai and Manu. We got together and began to think about what this performance and installation was going to be like, with the photos that Héctor took of me before and after the surgery. The idea of taking off a second skin was unclear until I met Insekto, who understood my vision and suggested something better than I had imagined, creating a second skin made of liquid latex, that I was going to be able to rip off. I loved taking it off, I felt a lot of joy. I don’t fit in this skin anymore.
I started to work on the texts, reading all my notebooks from 2016 to today, looking for all the fragments where I talk about my gender, water, and my body as home. Revisiting my own writings was painful. The first years of my transition, which I had not yet named that way, were a refusal to be a woman, highly influenced by experiencing sexism and sexual violence. But since I didn’t want to be a man either, I didn’t know what choice I had. Dolores helped me think about the texts and reflect on the use of languages, and I decided to record the texts just as I wrote them, in the language in which I wrote them. Spanish allowed me to name myself and use a neutral pronoun, which is still impossible in French, my native language. I feel that I was able to transition thanks to a place, Mexico City, because I was able to exist in the language. My brother Xavier, my best friend, an ally since I was born, an ally in the most painful years of my depressive disorder, and always an ally with my sexual orientation and gender confusion, helped me revise and edit the texts. It was important to me that he be part of this performance in some way. He told me that it was interesting to read in my words these things that I told him and that we have talked about for years. Zemmoa helped me record the texts in her studio. Jovan agreed to DJ as part of the celebration and party that this performance was. It was so special to be able to share bits of this creative process with people who were essential in my gender processes in recent years, and whom I love very much.
I thank all of these people who were part of the creation of SANGUAZA and also:
The people who took care of me after my top surgery and were there the night of the performance: Bia, Huguette, Héctor, Feyla, Diego, Lucia, Saul, Cesi, Paulina. I can be who I am because of your love. This full moon in Sagittarius was a big harvest and what we continue to plant by choice will continue to flourish.
Thank you to the people who made me who I am, to all the people who have have passed through me and who I have passed through in my entire life. Thanks to the people who loved me until I loved myself and who made me feel that I can love myself. (I borrowed this concept from Caffyn Jesse and my Somatic Sex Education community, originally from the Twelve Step processes.)
Thanks to my family, for their unconditional support and the space they gave me from the beginning until today.
Thanks to the 160 people who came. We really didn’t expect so much interest and it means a lot to me. Special thanks to the Permanente crew, with whom I have been dancing every week for two and a half years, which is basically my most stable relationship.
Thanks to the people who were there with me emotionally in the days before and after the performance.
Thanks to the JXTX production team, with a special hug to Gio, for his physical and emotional support on the day of the performance.
Thanks to Tatsumi for pushing me creatively, for being a genius, for understanding me, for solving the lighting issues, for the emotional support after the performance, and for this beautiful friendship that we are building.
I deeply thank Rai and Manu for this collaboration. Thank you for believing in my art, in my voice and in my vision; I am very demanding and committed to my work and you proved me that there are people I can trust and with whom I can collaborate. Thank you for making me believe more in love and magic. Here’s to many more years.