Vestir-se de si: representações e resistências do corpo trans na arte contemporânea

Abstract

Throughout the history of art, images constructed around the human body have been used to establish social and gender hierarchies, assigning distinct and specific places to bodies. Under the hegemony of religious, scientific, and political discourses, the female body came to be perceived as fragile and subordinate, confined to domestic labor and moral control, while the male body was projected as universal, rational, and dominant. Thus, the body is both historically and culturally constructed, and artistic representations have, for centuries, reinforced a hierarchical gender dichotomy. Under the influence of Christianity, the body was disciplined and sanctified when useful to doctrine, and repressed when associated with desire and transgression. Art history, predominantly narrated from a normative perspective, has long been governed by dominant political interests and has concealed other existences and productions, legitimizing Eurocentric aesthetic standards. Art, in turn, is not neutral; it articulates representations and meanings that produce realities and contest narratives. Therefore, the body in art can both reproduce normative structures and express political resistance and social critique. The body, then, transcends its mere biological function and is symbolically inscribed in various spheres of human life, shaping identities, social relations, and systems of power. This study is anchored in Michel Foucault’s perspective on the power of discourse to shape reality, regulate bodies, and produce the logics that sustain practices of domination. In parallel, Judith Butler, Paul Preciado, and Guacira Lopes Louro contribute within the scope of queer theory. Within this context, the trans body emerges as a fundamental category for understanding contemporary shifts in art, as it challenges the naturalization of gender and exposes the violence imposed by normative regimes. By occupying the field of representation, the trans body confronts exclusionary systems that have long enforced its invisibility. This research thus contributes to cultural and gender studies by analyzing the representation of the trans body in contemporary art produced in Curitiba, investigating how local artists articulate their works at the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Through the analysis of works by artists from Curitiba, the study seeks to understand how their poetics mediate and challenge gender conventions—either reinforcing or subverting such representations—by questioning established norms and contributing to the construction of dissident visualities. By foregrounding bodies that elude the cisnormativity regime, these works establish new forms of presence and belonging, expanding debates on identity, autonomy, and social transformation within the field of visual arts.