—A Voice for Erauso. Epilogue for a Trans Time, 2021-22

Synchronized double projection. 4k Video transferred to HD, colour, sound, 16:9. Duration: 28’15’’.
Colour photographs, 80 x 65 cm. each
Diverse materials

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A Voice for Erauso. Epilogue for a Trans Time began at the end of 2018 with an invitation from Azkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao to display a solo exhibition. During the conceptualisation of the project, originally planned to see the light in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and forced cultural spaces to be closed and programmes to be altered. Its public presentation was therefore delayed, and finally moved to March 2022. Thus, the result is the product of a long collaborative process.

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As part of a historical reconsideration strategy regarding gender discrepancies and their representation, we have been discussing Anglo-Saxon prominence for years in this theoretical context, and proposing different and closer alternatives, if not in time, definitely in terms of latitudes foreign to the canon. For this reason, on receiving the invitation to share our work in Bilbao, we decided to look in-depth at Erauso, an important character from the past yet insufficiently ‘portrayed’ in our history. Midway between the 16th and 17th centuries, with a considerably conflictive history in many ways, Erauso appeared as somebody capable of crossing the divide regarding the restrictions of gender binary traditionally imposed on our bodies throughout history. If for the world she was known as Catalina de Erauso, with the pejorative nickname of ‘Lieutenant Nun’, we realised when doing our research on their life that Catalina had willingly given way to Antonio and spent their entire life trying to live as a man. So strong was their desire to do this, that as a person of their time, he did whatever was necessary to achieve such goal.

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In the words of Paul B. Preciado, curator of the show presented in Bilbao, “the audio–visual installation A Voice for Erauso. Epilogue for a Trans Time (2021) builds a new portrait of Erauso through the confrontation of three trans and non–binary people (Tino de Carlos, Lewin Lerbours and Bambi), with the historical portrait. The spectral figure in the painting responds with the voice and music of the artist Mursego (Maite Arroitajauregi) in Spanish and Basque. The video installation works like a time machine through which the faces and voices erased from the past meet other bodies, in other places, with other languages. Before two video screens, where the images sometimes converge and sometimes differ, we find ourselves facing a complex time — the provisionally configured, dynamic time of history under construction. This work is also a multiple self–portrait: Cabello/Carceller, along with Tino de Carlos, Lewin Lerbours and Bambi, look at themselves in Erauso’s portrait as if they were in a quantum mirror distorted by history, and they give us back a punk and non–binary version of our own collective present.”

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Character 1: Tino de Marcos Ortega
Character 2: Lewin Lerbours
Character 3: Bambi
Character 4: Portrait of Doña Catalina de Erauso, The Lieutenent Nun (by Juan van der Hamen y León), oil on canvas, c. 1625 and Lieutenant Nun (by Luis Gómez de Arteche), oil on canvas, 1900.
Surfer: Cris Álvarez Lavín
Music: Maite Arroitajauregi «Mursego»