Trans Memory Archive: “This one left, this one was killed, this one died”

By the Trans Memory Archive: curatorial text for the exhibition to be held on December 2nd at the Haroldo Conti Cultural Center, formerly ESMA, Buenos Aires. The Trans Memory Archive is a family reunion. It arises from the need to embrace each other again, to look at each other again, to reconnect after more than…

November 30, 2017

By the Trans Memory Archive: curatorial text for the exhibition to be held on December 2nd at the Haroldo Conti Cultural Center, Ex ESMA, Buenos Aires. The Trans Memory Archive is a family reunion. It arises from the need to embrace each other again, to look at each other again, to reconnect after more than 15 years with the comrades we thought were dead, with whom we drifted apart due to differences or exile; and with the memories of those who, indeed, are no longer with us. From our past, marked by exclusion and violence, many things remained unfinished, dropped, or abandoned in the urgency of existence. Photographs, stories, diaries, magazines, objects, and everything that survived us bear witness to our activism before activism and to why today there are fewer than 100 of us over 55 years old. Some members of the Trans Memory Archive team: Our reality has always been struggle and resistance. And an intense shine on our lips.

[READ ALSO: “Trans people have the right to a memory”]

Today, we piece together memories to paint a portrait of our departed friend. In the debate over the true version of the story, we uncover details, subtle nuances we had forgotten, but which another friend preserved and which now reside in the orbit of our shared memories. We look inward with nostalgia, joy, and sorrow, collectively recalling the scent of her signature perfume; that unique voice; her gestures; her body; the most tragicomic anecdotes of jail cells and police officers; who gave her that nickname that would forever remain unsigned; the excitement of her outfit for the big carnival party; her new family in Paris, Rome, Villa Madero; the days leading up to her death and the nights spent in Godoy Cruz, the Palermo Woods, or her private apartment. Essential traces that would be lost without this exercise of intimate, subjective memory, which together becomes collective.

Being together was the way we found to resist the many forms of violence perpetrated by civil society and the state. Staying together is what we do to strengthen, through the creation of this archive, the power of our bonds. In these photographs, life becomes more intense, despite so much death. Perhaps it's because they are coming to light, because they are being reborn. This is the closest and truest account that can exist about our community, because we, the survivors, built it.]]>

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