Agrippina R. Manhattan is an artist, researcher and transgender woman. Born and raised in São Gonçalo, she currently lives and looks for a job in Rio de Janeiro. Her work is part of a deep concern towards everything that imposes limits to freedom. The word, the norm, the hierarchy, the thought, herself. She isn’t obliged to anything and finds it satisfying. She chose her own name and invented herself, as she chooses the title for a work or as she finds her voice in a poetic practice. To think of sculpture as poetry, poetry as sculpture and
all of it as one.
“To all of it that is possible to think of but it’s still impossible to denominate.
An impossible love.”
You speak in your bio that you face and feel your work as part of a deep concern about what restricts your freedom. But you also say that everything you are is because you wanted to be.
Could you explain what these restrictions on freedom are, and how do you deal with them so that you can become what you want to be and what you already are?
"The word, the norm, the hierarchy, the thought".
These are some points in my research that stand out as illustrations of a system, which are points of freedom restriction.
Let's start with the word: both within my artistic work and in my research as an art historian. Language is something that I sometimes use with a certain concern. I find it interesting to reflect on the fact that we write in Portuguese. In other words, we depend on the lexicon and what is possible within a colonial language to be able to express our thoughts.
When we do the exercise of learning another language, be it an indigenous language, English, sign language, we realize that, in addition to another construction of symbols, phonemes, and gestures, we are structuring another way of thinking. The language has ways of organizing blocks of thought in the structure of sentences, in the structure of the construction of the meanings of words. I think this is a prison camp that restricts us in a certain way. We are stuck only with what is possible within that language. It becomes evident when we realize that the language doesn't keep up with the body, so the second escapes. And from that, new words, new languages, new meanings, and new struggles are created.
Hierarchy is also a form of building a society that we have internalized throughout our history. I have naturalized many situations in which I was inserted in hierarchies, in which the way they were constituted imposes a type of violence that we are not aware of. It is not about this desire to homogenize, despite having connections, but to understand these hierarchical positions not as our differences but as a place that has been imposed on us to maintain structures functioning.
For example, when I go to school, I need to internalize that the teacher knows more than I do because I am there to learn. We cannot work outside this binary logic. Someone who knows and someone who doesn't know. The badass and the asshole. The villain and the good guy.
The thought has to do with the previous idea of the word. Lucille Clifton is right when she says that "we can't create what we can't imagine." I think that, historically, the history of art, which is my major in university, has been one of the possible tools for building imagery. And that later was passed to the culture of media, cinema, television.
So, how is it a world that we can imagine? This is in line with what I expect from my role as an artist: to have the power to circumvent somehow those instances that restrict freedom and to be able mainly to allow me to imagine worlds. Diane Lima talks about "worlds that are not historically available to us," and I think that's so true.
I have been thinking a lot about art history as a field of production, much more than research. I am much more interested in actively dialoguing with some issues than just studying them. Not that studying doesn't mean producing an action upon something. But I mean it in the work of art, in the matter of making it exist.
Carta para Alguém, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
Let's talk about your use of writing. I wanted to hear mainly about the poem Carta para Alguém (Letter to Someone) (2018) and the work A Linha e a Agulha (The thread and needle) (2018). I wanted you to talk about the process and about the choices of what should be evidenced or not in these works?
They are two very different works for me, despite having this connection with writing. I'll talk about the Carta para Alguém first.
This work was the first exercise that I did in the Parque Lage training program. I liked it and started exhibiting it.
It is a medication package insert that contains estrogen-primogyna, used for hormone therapy, menopause effects, or hormonal disorders.
I bought this package insert and read it carefully. I was terrified of taking hormones at first. Again for the sake of the imaginary: they had planted in my head that I was going to take a pill, my leg would turn purple, and I would start to have clots. I started (and continue) taking it without medical supervision — on a side note, this is another issue, as well. The knowledge of Western medicine, as crucial as it is, also needs to be questioned and revised.
So, I have an aversion to this form of scientific and technical writing. Not because of the complexity of specific words in a field of knowledge, but because it proposes impersonality. And it bothers me a lot. [obliging oneself to] neutrality, in a way that one writes without being present. I see it as a lie, and it instigated me.
[The class at the Parque Lage] was about the use of text. The idea was to write a letter. I imagined turning this medication package insert into a letter. I was looking for the words; I read it several times. And then, I ended up in this configuration of words. I wrote about this work once, something I liked, that's why I'm going to quote myself: I don't think I wrote this letter. I think I found it. It was already written inside the package insert.
There is this issue of not writing but working with words that were already written. To write through absence, and to make sense of what is erased.
However, some excerpts turned out very good. For example, the letter ends with "talk to the risks." And I found this a message for myself: to understand that the hormone therapy process is a risk, and I have to be willing to take that risk. Or not, if I don't want to.
A Linha e a Agulha was another process, and a lot more fun, because it was a collective process. This is the work that I exhibited for the completion of the Parque Lage course that I took.
It was super cool, we formed a lot of friendships, and I had my friends helping me write those words, and it was also a beautiful moment to share with them — they are amazing people and great artists. We wrote those words with a permanent pen and an eyeliner, thus the particular result.
I believe that in work there is a greater concern for the general figure than for the details. Sometimes it's a trap that I fall into. Not that it is not important to pay attention to details, but I did not care so much that this sentence of the thread would be well finished. Well, I think you can read it. But it depends on how much time you invest in reading it— it did take me a long time to write. And it is the same phrase that is repeated throughout the whole thread.
I think that this work shows what I feel, it is not necessary to understand everything, and it is okay if something goes unnoticed. I even like this part of the job that is kept secret. In fact, originally, this work was supposed to be in the dark, but it didn't happen.
I think that transposition is a very important point because it is a counterpoint. The led goes on the wish is not enough, and on the cables, it is written the wish must find the way. Exploring this notion of not being enough, having to walk, with this bundle of thread passing through, and I think this work calls the thread and the needle because I believe that one cannot exist without the other. I think the thread and the needle is about this encounter. But, at the same time, also to understand them as two independent elements.
In some of your works, I was thinking about the contradiction between a sophistication in the form that the object is presented and a weight that the object brings.
For example, in O abuso da beleza ou A travesti que queria ser Artista (The abuse of beauty or The transgender who wanted to be an Artist) (2018), we see a razor made of gold in a velvet box. Or in Comunhão (Communion) (2017), you present a mixture with blood in a perfume bottle. Can we talk about this contrast?
These are two very close works, you can even see the choice of red. I think my artistic practice operates at a pace that, I am afraid of that word, but I like to think that I am a conceptual artist. I believe my works operate first in a relationship with the imagination, with fiction, with the idea of imagining possibilities. Sometimes, they saw only a drawing or a poem, and it remains in that.
Before doing this work, O Abuso da Beleza, I had already thought of doing something with that name "the transgender who wanted to be an artist." The thought was circulating in my head. And I didn't know if I wanted to do a series or just one work, and I ended up making this sculpture in gold. I put this double proposition of name: the transgender who wanted to be an artist and the abuse of beauty — the second part is also the name from a book by Arthur C. Danto, which conceptualizes aesthetics.
I think there is a double cut about the razor: it is a work that means one thing for trans people and it means something else for cis people. People tend to think that the razor discusses much heavier topics, carrying a lot of fear, but I look at it and find myself thinking about my place in the world, and the place of other trans people. And considering how many trans people might want to be an artist, and how many can actually be recognized in this place.
In addition, I think that there is a complexity in that symbol that trans people can easily access. For me, in fact, the razor has a history. It is an object that is fragile, like a body that puts itself at risk. At the same time, it is also a weapon, because it can also hurt. Its cut is the only thing it has to defend itself.
So, I think that giving this object the place of a jewel, of gold sculpture, is more about these fragile bodies that need to defend themselves by being golden, than a razor itself.
Comunhão is one of the oldest works that I have in my portfolio, and I still like it. And it's not just any mix: it's a perfume made from blood. It has everything that any perfume has to have. The ingredients are listed for those who want to make it at home. It has a fixative, it smells good, it's a perfume made from my blood — between 10 and 15 mL.
And it is on display at the desire of anyone who wants to wear it. It is a work that can be handled, although most people rarely do it.
It is in that place of offering, of communion, in the biblical sense, of offering blood to others. And I think it has a dimension of transmutation in it, of encounter. I also believe that when someone puts themself in that place of disgust, they are producing an act of violence against a part of me.
The encounter often falls into a place of discomfort. We need to deal with this discomfort because it is a fundamental part of our learning. This reaction of violence to what is strange already shows something that has been conditioned to our bodies, by cis-patriarchal education, by a world that wishes to promote and extend more violence.
Subterrâneas, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
In the last paragraph of the text read for the performance Subterrâneas (Subterranean) (2018), you ask the listeners to rethink how they naturalize things.
"It is necessary for you to review how you naturalize things. For me, the most natural of actions becomes an issue. Not just because I'm trans, but because it's me."
I wanted to hear more about what you mean in this excerpt?
I love this work. And I wanted to start by saying that I shared it with two people that I also love very much, namely Yhuri Cruz and Alan Muniz.
I like works that demand collaborations because I find it very difficult to work together, but at the same time, I think it is a fun way of working. I have to live in this contradiction.
This work was an invitation from Jean Carlos Azuos, the curator of the exhibition Corpos In Transito, to be done in an incredible space, one of my favorites, the Galpão Bela Maré. I went to do a closing performance for this exhibition that talked about the body.
At that moment, it was essential for me to feel that I was the only trans person in the exhibition and that I was naturalizing the feeling of being alone. The text read during the performance is a long one; it has about three pages because I wanted it to last as long as it would take me to be undressed, put in the cart, and buried. And it ended up lasting longer.
Whenever I say you need to, I am speaking to myself as much as I speak to someone else. I think that I often fall into the naturalization of violence, the naturalization of sadness, and loneliness, which are often placed as guiding emotions by cisgender people. And I don't want that for my life. I don't want that for Agrippina's life. For my trajectory and my future. And I think I can build this act of not wanting to. And begin to naturalize other emotions, other configurations.
In this particular work, I was thinking about the figure of the wheelbarrow. At that time, a trans woman named Dandara had been murdered, and there is a video on the internet that shows her body being carried in a wheelbarrow, as if she was nothing, as if she were a pile of bricks. And I was hugely impacted by that image. Dandara's murder is on video. It was a mediatized crime, and I keep thinking about this phenomenon of mediatizing pain and violence, and I think that this is something that we also naturalized. We got used to seeing violence.
So, this work develops the idea of discomfort that I mentioned earlier. It is uncomfortable for me to be naked and exposed, I have to read in public, and I hate to speak in public. And I believe that this discomfort is returned to the people who are watching as well. In addition, there is an attempt to understand this body that is buried alive while talking, in a wheelbarrow, while people stand and watch and listen.
You've been nominated for the PIPA Prize in 2019 and the AnnexB + EAV travel scholarship award". How do you see these indications, since you refer to the art world as the CIStem (rather than system) of the arts? What are the most urgent changes within this CIStem? Are there ways to put them into practice?
Well, I was happy. I won't be a hypocrite. And I was astonished on both occasions because sometimes I also naturalize an insecurity that I shouldn't have. Both occasions were a form of acknowledgment of my work. Still, I understand that it is a CIStem, because it is a system made by cis people who will legitimize an artwork to inform other cis people based on their opinion, and not on the work itself.
I didn't win the [EAV award]. Someone else went to New York, but she was a friend of mine, so that's okay.
Nor did I win the PIPA award. But I was more excited because two transgender friends were nominated. I understood that having the three of us indicated as a positive movement in a way, as the previous year was the first edition that a non-cisgender person had been nominated. Thus I found this exponential growth interesting.
So, Yhuri Cruz and I, who had passed to the second phase, realized that it was a lot of money. And we decided to run a campaign together to see if one of us won, so that we could divide the prize into three parts, one part for me, one for him and a third part would be donated to Casa Nem. It means it would be R$ 5000 for each one, and that was exciting.
Yhuri and I understood that this money was given for an artist to rent a studio or buy more sophisticated materials. However, the minimum wage in Brazil is just over R$ 900 per month. In other words, R$ 15,000 is a lot of money for us — maybe not for other people in the arts.
Unfortunately, we didn't win, but Denilson Baniwa, the artist who won, is incredible. And he was also aware that this money needed to be redistributed, so part of his prize went to a Baniwa community in Amazonas, where he comes from.
I really like the anti-curriculum section on your website where you share past rejections. Can you talk a little more about the meaning behind it?
I have been trying to deal with rejections and failures better. Not only in my artistic practice, but I have been trying to change it even in my relationships.
The anti-curriculum is a little out of date, I have been refused much more than that and more recently, but I do not put on my curriculum everything that I did, nor everything that I did not do. Of what is there, most are exhibitions and projects that I really wanted.
But they are also part of life. In fact, I don't understand that this is a rejection because rejection has more to do with relationships and family. I think it's about investing my time signing up for something that didn't happen, and what upsets me the most are the ones you have to pay to submit.
For me, the anti-curriculum part is about reminding me that nobody gets into everything at first, and that's okay. I like to think that I am made up of what worked and what didn't. I want to review at some point many of those are projects, and that helps me not to forget.
Not to forget that there are some things there that I don't even remember anymore, just like in my resume. And, mainly, that there is not an exhibition that will talk about my work and me. Sometimes, it will serve to get lost on my website, so I cannot allow that to make me so sad. Deep down, I believe that things happen for a reason.
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