TransArchitecture

Abstract

TransArchitecture Adrians Black Varella (bio) and Natasha Marzliak Redefining its objectives based on the current needs for social change (based on freedom, equality, and mutual aid), Adrians Black (they/their/them)’s radical-social art and its approach to the moving contexts of present times can be a political instrument to unveil and struggle for new landscapes. Their interdisciplinary artworks take the shape of urban interventions, performances, photos, happenings, trans-media events, and environmental projects. They operate the mutual contamination of diverse media that is immersive, collaborative, and participatory in nature and intended to stimulate critical thought (articulating art with anarko-feminist-trans-queer and anti-colonial set of positions). Promoting potency space-times for the uprising of subjective identities that give power to the collective, Black created TransArchitecture drawings (2019—). The project supports the Brazilian indigenous struggle for territories, autonomy, identity difference and against the destruction of forests, operating forms of resistance to hegemonic narratives that represent subjects doomed to subalterity and deterritorialize the modern/colonial project of power, knowledge, and being. TransArchitecture also foresees architectural interference in private and collective homes of LGBTQIA+ people. Starting from the idea that the oppressive logic of rationality shapes, through architectural instrumentation, our bodies and behaviors, marginalizing and submitting bodies that are considered undesirable in a pathologizing and normative perspective of the bipartite female-male condition, TransArchitecture is insurrection. From the different movements of the bodies, it builds new spaces of life and coexistence. It is a flow of contra-position to the structures of these previously marginalized bodies that now vibrate, survivors. It is a dispositive of [End Page 258] worlds that penetrates the base of the traditional architectural structure to present new ways of being, and living together in the world. To paraphrase the philosopher Didi-Huberman, the artworks involving TransArchitecture “are like fireflies of hope.” Click for larger view View full resolution Adrians Black Varella, TransArchitecture, 2019–. Paper and ink. [End Page 259] Adrians Black Varella Adrians Black Varella is a multi-disciplinary artist who makes audio installations, photographs, drawings, performances, video-art experimentations, computer installations, and site-specific/public art works. They create and organize the AnarkoArtLab in New York City, https://www.anarkoartlab.com. Their work can be found at www.adrianavarella. net. They can be reached at adrianavarella@yahoo.com. Copyright © 2023 Adrians Black Varella