Dead Family

Intervening the past to regain control of our history. Resignifying LGBTIQ+ archives build a more diverse memory for the future. Dead Family is a photographic intervention, but also a political one.

In 2013 my mother died and this marked a separation with my family. I moved away from that home that was both a refuge and a concentration camp. In 2022 I began to revisit the family archive, I understood that I was not in it. I also could say that this person, who is apparently me, was an imposed representation. I began to visit other family archives of LGBTIQ+ people and my questions became certain. My story, and that of my chosen family, has something in common. The early years of our personal memories do not represent who we are. Every diverse gesture was censored. Most childhoods, trans, non-binary, queer and sex-diverse, we must raise ourselves alone, rethink the idea of home and fight for our rights.

Dead family is an investigation that looks at the family archive as a binary historical document that protects heteronormative narratives imposed by patriarchal structures. These impositions imply a sexist order that separates the masculine from the feminine and marginalizes identities that are outside of this political-biological mechanism. Diverse identities do not have visibility and representation in the action of the "family portrait".

Dead family is a work that intervenes in the family archive. It is a photographic intervention, but also a political one. It is a naturally collective project that needs the voice and the gaze of the LGBTIQ+ community. This collaborative nature allows each person to intervene their own archives as a way to regain control of their own history and generate a counter-archive that evidences the systematic violence experienced as LGBTIQ+ children. Also to build a more diverse visual memory for the future.