ÎlE BRÉSIL
Île brésil|in the press
return to altamira
audiovisual installatiONS
my body is political
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ABOUT
These images are drawn from a body of work focusing on São Paulo’s transgender community, particularly active in Latin America’s largest city. Begun in 2019, at the start of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, and continued through the pandemic, the project is ongoing today in a new political context. Vincent Catala explores the resistance and vitality of this community in the face of violence and rejection from parts of Brazilian society.
He follows the daily lives of its members, moving between artistic performances and visibility events, and more intimate moments drawn from everyday life. Over time, this approach has developed into a collaboration with Vicenta Perrotta, founder of the Transmoras workshop, a space providing support and guidance to transgender people living on the streets, located on the outskirts of São Paulo.
The artist and activist is photographed in a range of settings — a bank, land owned by major commercial groups, the street — where her presence disrupts the codes governing these spaces. The work explores the encounter between the transgender body and these regulated environments, questioning the norms that shape them. This same approach is also at the heart of a film Vincent Catala made with trans singer Deusa Nagô, shot at a Petrobras oil facility.
The resulting work moves constantly between the intimate body and the social body, echoing the ambivalence of Brazilian society, marked by both the violence of exclusion and a profound desire for change.
From this perspective, My Body Is Political can be seen in dialogue with the long-term project Île Brésil: a long-term immersion in the anonymous margins of Brazil’s major cities, where Vincent Catala lived and worked, exploring the deep-rooted forces and inherited structures that continue to shape the country.