Onika

Onika, 28, is a Brazilian dancer and transvestite I photographed for two years.

Early when I started my project "Abaixa Que é Tiro" I met Onika, 28, a dancer and transvestite.

We talked a lot on our first shooting day, especially about her transition, and I realized that even I, who am surrounded by these women, had no idea what that process is like and what it involves, so I began to document her physical transition, already quite apparent.

Most trans women go through a transition based on female hormones and testosterone blocker, this involves difficulties like: lack of passability; daily disrespect for not being treated by the social name; transphobia; doctors who are not prepared to deal with the trans body, physically and psychologically; a public health system that only provides hormonal treatment after an embarrassing and long screening; a society that marginalizes trans people, especially transvestites; the non-acceptance of the family; emotional oscillations; insecurities; dysphoria.

With this project I intend to show the difficulties and beauty of this process of identifying as a woman having been born in a body that society still recognizes as masculine. I believe it can contribute to the deconstruction of stereotypes, to help other transgender women to accept themselves better and to show that transitioning is a difficult process, but for women like Onika, not transitioning is not an option.

Thinking of territory as metal space, where the flow of thoughts, affections and perceptions happen, not neglecting to consider that it’s been historically created by society, fruit of the history of mentalities, ways of thinking and acting in the world, disseminated, propagated and multiplied by the structures of power, one that has no choice but to break up with most of the atavistics concepts of what is to be a woman in our society, is undoubtedly a free person. In my opnion, the more the mental territory is created by the person herself, the more this person is actually free, Onika is creating a woman she always wanted to be, she is the freest person I know.