Sin Nombre, Sin Cuerpo

September 20 - October 18, 2019

Curated by Christine Gwillim, Ph.D | Visual Arts Center | Austin, Texas

All text written by the Curator

Saakred’s work is raw, interdisciplinary, and deeply personal. Each time they share live work publicly, it feels like a window into their heart and mind’s inner workings. Like their live performance, Sin Nombre, Sin Cuerpo moves across genres to document and reveal a lexicon for learning to live as a trans Latino.

Trans Act I presents the remnants of their transition. Rather than stand in for the labor involved, these objects allude to the painful, joyful, and oftentimes banal necessities of medical transition. The remnants are quotidian and uniquely Texan: a receipt from HEB, for example, alludes to the struggle to obtain hormones and the danger of doing so as a Latinx person who sometimes “passes” and is at other times targeted. Meanwhile, Trans Act II explores masculinity, machismo, and familiarity in a new body.

Together, Trans: Act One and Act Two interrogate the relationship between sonic protest, ephemeral traces, and institutional suffocation. Existing just outside but also within the university, Saakred’s work offers a dynamic perspective on visibility and livability in Austin for Latino trans men. (All text by Christine Gwillim, PhD)

Trans Act I (2014–2017)
Trans Act I presents a collection of ephemera—from paychecks and used testosterone bottles to video documentation of a haircut—that Saakred accumulated during their transition. This body of work first appeared at MASS gallery in 2017 while the artist was mid-transition, and now represents a time period in their work that was both self-reflective and outwardly political. All of the objects in this collection were made between 2014 and 2017, documenting the artist’s process of coming out, changing names, changing physical appearances, and ultimately making the decision to undergo top surgery. The objects in this collection do not represent all trans people or a universal experience of transitioning; rather, they represent one person’s unique journey through this process. The documentarian impulse in Trans Act I continues in Trans Act II, moving between past, present, and even imagined futures. TransAct I explores the struggle and embodied labor of Rodriguez’s transition. 

Contingent on Context: Saakred Saakred’s first solo exhibition, "Sin Nombre, Sin Cuerpo," proves a milestone

By Angelique Rosales Salgado
November 12, 2019

Trans Act II (2018–2019)

Three childhood drawings displayed alongside collector’s stickers from 1990s vending machines in San Antonio track a young person’s struggle to identify with and fit into Latinidad. The drawings depict sexy Latina women, vintage cars, and well-dressed muscular Latino men. The drawings are both representational and aspirational—saved and referred back to by the artist as they strove to insert their own experience into the narrative these stickers tell. Now, twenty years later, Saakred depicts figures from the South Texas trans community as the heroes in these images, superimposed on the hoods of the ‘it’ cars seen in San Antonio. In contrast to Trans Act I, Trans Act II explores the vibrancy of trans Latino/a life with a series of ‘firsts’ for the artist—experiencing both new and habitual tasks again for the first time. Rather than without, Trans Act II is with the body: discovering it, memorializing it, and honoring what they always imagined it to be.

ABOUT THE CURATOR: Christine Gwillim (b. 1985, Cadillac, MI) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator. She is a PhD candidate in Performance as Public Practice with portfolios in Museum Studies and Women and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her doctoral research focuses on curatorial practice at contemporary performance festivals. She is a graduate student affiliate with the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice and leads the Austin chapter of the American Theatre Archive Project. Her writing has appeared in Performance Matters, Sightlines, Written and Spoken and Deeply Fascinating. Christine holds a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA from New York University. She is a member of the curatorial project Block Party Collective.