THUS I CONSTRUCT MY OWN FLESH

At the invitation of the director of the Mário de Andrade Library, Jurandy Valença, I conceived the project "CONSTRUO ASSIM MINHA PRÓPRIA CARNE" in 2024, a group exhibition of visual arts designed to fit within the library's activities celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto.

The exhibition featured works by three artists: Aun Helden (@aunhelden), accompanied by Marcelo Gerab (@marcelogerab) on sound, who presented a performance rooted in the question: what remains when a woman rejects the aspiration for a body molded by the hyper-femininity expected by cisnormative hegemony? Sansa (@sansa______) debuted her work in sculpture, where she explores the same question from the opposite perspective: what nightmares are embodied when we accept becoming the extreme image of dominant expectations for the female body? Finally, Nuno Q. Ramalho (@nunoqramalho) exhibited his mural work for the first time in São Paulo, showcasing pieces that explore the relationship between the anamorphism of his images—designed to overflow the flatness of walls—and the body dysmorphia that often fuels the relentless drive towards becoming a "monster," particularly among men, as seen in bodybuilding subcultures.

Below, you’ll find the curatorial text I produced, along with some photographic records of the exhibition by Victor Galvão and Jana Cavalli.

THUS I CONSTRUCT MY OWN FLESH explores the intersections and divergences between various socio-bio-technological practices of constructing a body which, in rejecting the concept of naturalness as passive acceptance of the conditions dictated by fate, seizes control of its own development, actualising into its physical structure an imagined virtuality of its own design. From the pumping of industrial silicone in the sculpting of the historical travesti body to the injection of synthol in bodybuilders’ fluffing, including the use of surgical interventions and synthetic hormones to either nullify or reinforce gender expression, consciously creating and destroying one’s own muscles, fat, and bones, such practices equally materialise dreams and nightmares of the flesh.

Chimeric Icaruses, we grope towards the Sun, empresses of our own cells. The oestradiol I swallow reprograms my genetic expression, blossoming fertility, breast and buttocks where once there was only will or ghost. The testosterone I inject stiffens my deltoids, biceps, triceps, and quadriceps, turning me into an arrow, dagger, precise bludgeon. The steel I lift brings me life and focus; the becoming-monster suspends the binary. Neither man nor woman: torment.

Nothing more unnatural than being human; desiring something beyond what is given. Nothing more human than desiring nothingness – lying down for the final requiem, ridding oneself of the carcass of flesh, being reduced to pure calcium and a thin epidermal layer, a black hole that ties itself in a knot before self-consuming and vanishing, leaving behind only the contra- dictory sound of the void. And a bit of dust.

I expand; I contract. I find home in my dreamlike incarnation.

Credits:
PRODUCTION AND CURATION Alice Granada
EXHIBITION DESIGN Flau Doudement
VISUAL IDENTITY Bea Oliveira
SUPPORT Biblioteca Mário de Andrade and Atelier Jurídico