Dead Homeland [2023-ong]
Gunshots. Crowns. Military. Beauty queens.
Venezuela is a factory of beautiful women and military men.
This production of national and heteronormative stereotypes reaffirmed the binary regime and the culture of violence.
This work re-examines history to understand the
militarization of the body and its dominant power.
A military society, sometimes with guns, sometimes with heels.
1992, a failed military coup d'état. 1993, I was born beating my mother's womb. 1995, four crowns transformed Venezuela into a universe. 1999,
the arrival of a future dictatorship and a new century.
I remember my family in front of the TV watching the opening of Miss Venezuela or the July 5th parade. My grandmother worked in the National Guard. There she met Borges and Perez. From those two relationships her 4 children were born. Julio and Manuel attended the Monseñor Arias military high school. Bélen was always a promising queen, she won some pageants locally. Olinda, my mother, was the last to be born. She was also called Oly, she could never wear heels because she was born with spina bifida.
To be born a woman in Venezuela is to feel the weight of beauty. To be born a man in Venezuela is to feel the weight of strength,
what weighs more?
I was not born on such a beautiful night “the child was born at 10:15 am” says my birth certificate.
But I was born the day the liberator Simón Bolívar died, but in 1993.
How many stories are going on while ours is happening?
Between family stories and national issues, I make a very queer catwalk to visit the past and understand the binary violence
that operates from the beauty queen and the military.