A Personal Account of Gender Hatred in Brazil

Visual artists Rodrigo Pinheiro and Gal Cipreste Marinelli offer their intimate take on the difficulties suffered by non-binary people in Brazil today by recalling their relationship to the street of Rio de Janeiro where one of the authors was assaulted in his childhood.

Visual artists Rodrigo Pinheiro and Gal Cipreste Marinelli offer their intimate take on the difficulties suffered by non-binary people in Brazil today by recalling their relationship to the street of Rio de Janeiro where one of the authors was assaulted in his childhood.

Around the age of 10, returning from school, Hiroshima was stoned on the street where they lived. Hiroshima was Rodrigo Pinheiro’s nickname in childhood. Rodrigo was born on the same day as the bomb. They had an ambiguous appearance and a body that navigated between genders.

gal started wearing small shorts as a teenager, then purses. Today, the high heels and gal’s non-binary identity are often a reason for the family’s imbalance.

The stones in the photos were collected in Flamínia Street, Vila da Penha, RJ, where Hiroshima lived. The heels are also real ones. gal was born on the day of the American president who launched the bomb.

The series is a collaboration between artists Rodrigo Pinheiro and Gal Cipreste Marinelli.

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Rodrigo Pinheiro live and work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rodrigo Pinheiro has graduated in cinema. His work comprises experimental shorts, film essays and photography. In april 2018, the photobook “Tornaras” was published independently with a limited edition of 100 copies. The photobook had a special launch at SP-Arte / Foto and won some awards, including Best Portfolio at the Fotorio Resiste 2018 Festival, Best Portfolio at Ateliê da Imagem 2018 and one of the 7 highlights of the year at the ZUM festival, hosted by the Moreira Salles Institute ( IMS) and ZUM Magazine. The book was also at Paris Photo, 2018, at Editora Madalena’s booth, and at the exhibition “What’s going on in Brazil?” in Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2019. Idealized, with Ton Zaranza and Rochelle Guimarães, the independent publisher “Chorona”, dedicated to photography and literature. Since then they travel to publishing fairs and festivals.

Gal Cipreste Marinelli (Rio de Janeiro, 1998) creates in the fields of photography, music and visual arts. The photographic series “gal e Hiroshima” is his first collaboration with artist Rodrigo Pinheiro. They work covers themes of gender identity and mixes fiction with reality.

Find Rodrigo on PHmuseum and Instagram, follow gal on Instagram.

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This feature is part of Story of the Week, a selection of relevant projects from our community handpicked by the PHmuseum curators.

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