Joanna wears a skirt, a bowler hat, and a blanket that covers her. She goes as a cholita at the top of La Paz in Bolivia. Joanna is Aymara and trans. From today, her portrait—and that of other women like her from different parts of America—is exhibited in Trans Nation: poverty and genderthe photographic exhibition by Antonio López Díaz (Madrid, 53 years old), which was presented this Thursday at the Museum of America in Madrid.
In the fifty photographs and documentary narratives in the exhibition, large-format portraits are combined with more intimate images and texts that contextualize each story and build “a mosaic of experiences crossed by resilience, dignity and resistance,” the museum summarizes the exhibition. Thus, women who belong to the Mayan and Chortí (Guatemala), Embera Chamí (Colombia), Guna (Panama), Aymara (Bolivia), Diaguita (Argentina), Huancavilva (Ecuador) and Navajo (United States) communities are portrayed.
The exhibition weaves identity, colonial heritage and precariousness to draw the map of a population that fights to make its reality visible, which cannot be understood without looking to the past. In addition, the exhibition delves into the origin of the prejudices and LGBTIphobia they suffer: the colonial irruption. Some indigenous societies recognized diverse gender identities, outside of the binary, before colonial and Christian rule.
“With evangelization, the third gender disappears and the prejudices that we have been carrying since that time affect these women daily because they have very few possibilities. The violence is so great that sometimes their families disown them,” says López, who is a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, as well as a regular contributor to the Planeta Futuro section of EL PAÍS.
Candles, altars and saints
Religiosity is another recurring element in the exhibition. The protagonists maintain a deep relationship with the spiritual: candles, altars and religious figures can be seen in several of the photographs. “They also want to be accepted within religion,” says López, who started this project in 2024.
For the author, the objective is to challenge the present, not to reopen historical debates. “This is not about revenge or judging the past,” he clarifies while touring the museum, which is managed by the Ministry of Culture. The photographer prefers to focus on the lives of the women portrayed. “What they have suffered before can no longer be erased. People suffer every day from many terrible things around the world. However, I believe that for there to be a better future, things must be fixed; legislation (for the protection of the trans community) is important, but it should not stop there, it also depends on the entire society,” he reflects.
The exhibition is integrated into the program Memory, art and trans diversity, with which the museum begins a space for dialogue and reflection around the experiences, memory and presence of trans people in contemporary society. Trans Nation ―in which the state LGTBI+ Federation (Felgtbi+) has also collaborated, in addition to the ministries of Equality and for the Ecological Transition and the demographic challenge (Miteco)― invites us to focus on a reality that has rarely occupied a space outside of marginality or that has not even been included in official narratives. “This is a group of people that has historically been vilified and discriminated against,” comments the photojournalist: “They do not represent a territorial concept, but rather the feeling of belonging.”
In 2017, the Museum of America presented the exhibition TRANS: diversity of identities and gender rolesa milestone in his career, which brought to the space a reflection on the transgression of identity, the cultural construction of the body and its artistic representation. The exhibition focused on the permanent presence of trans people in cultures around the world and included representations of indigenous trans women from North America, known as berdaches, as well as muxes from Oaxaca or tidawinas from Venezuela, among others. “As a whole, it proposed a review of the heteronormative and patriarchal discourse, showing other ways of understanding gender beyond the division between masculine and feminine,” the institution details. “On this occasion, the museum reviews the changes in the last decade and analyzes how these experiences are reflected in the representation and identity devices of museums,” they add.