{"id":2064,"date":"2018-08-06T09:04:44","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T09:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/?p=2064"},"modified":"2018-09-07T14:15:36","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T14:15:36","slug":"outing-queer-archives-in-mexico-city-the-jotographies-of-agustin-martinez-castro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/2018\/08\/06\/outing-queer-archives-in-mexico-city-the-jotographies-of-agustin-martinez-castro\/","title":{"rendered":"Outing Queer Archives in Mexico City: The \u201cJotographies\u201d of Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Medi\u00e1tico proudly presents a broad ranging account of a recent exhibition of the photographic work of Mexican queer artist and activist Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro<\/b> by Mexico City-based independent researcher and\u00a0Medi\u00e1tico <\/i>contributing editor Roberto Carlos Ortiz.<\/em><\/p>\n

Outing Queer Archives in Mexico City: The \u201cJotographies\u201d of Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro<\/strong>
\nby Roberto Carlos Ortiz<\/p>\n

1. Coming Out<\/strong>
\nFeatured Image: Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro & Mar\u00eda Eugenia Chellet<\/strong>, from the Blue (Azul)<\/strong> series, created by Mart\u00ednez Castro & Chellet, 1982.[1. Images courtesy of Centro de la Imagen. Many thanks to C\u00e9sar Gonz\u00e1lez <\/span>Aguirre and Ana Ocadiz for their help.]<\/p>\n

They tell of people who worked and played, who laughed and fought, and who are finally remembered.
\n\u2013 Cindy Ruskin, The Quilt: Stories from the NAMES Project<\/em>, 1988[2. Cindy Ruskin et al., The Quilt: Stories from the NAMES Project<\/em>, New York, Pocket Books, 1988, p. 13.]<\/p>\n

On April 19, 2018, the archive of images created by Mexican artist Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro (1950 \u2013 1992) was \u201couted\u201d in Pirates on the Boulevard: Public Demonstrations<\/a><\/u><\/em>, <\/a>1978- 1988<\/a><\/em><\/u>, the first retrospective of his work. During a lifetime cut short by AIDS, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro took part in the homosexual liberation movement in Mexico City and created an important archive of images that gave visibility to 1980s LGBTQ activism, theater, nightlife and underground scenes. His \u201couting\u201d or \u201ccoming out\u201d at Centro de la Imagen, where the exhibit ran until July 15, can be linked to the drag tradition that subverted debutante balls to present gay men into society, as channeled through the contemporary practices of queer curators and scholars who rescue, review and engage with the legacies of LGBTQ artists.<\/p>\n

Born in Veracruz, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro studied Communications at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In 1978, Mart\u00ednez Castro met Juan Jacobo Hern\u00e1ndez, co-founder of the newly formed Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action, FHAR, and the next year took his first photos in collaboration with them. In 1979, he also joined the Group of Independent Photographers, formed in 1976 and led by Adolfo Pati\u00f1o. The 1980s were a period of intense activity in Mexican photography. The intersection of political engagement and art production continued as Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro collaborated with different collectives and organizations. He also had a personal network<\/a><\/u> of artist friends and lovers. Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s earlier photos were documentary-style black-and-white images about consumer culture in t<\/a>he city<\/a><\/u> and gay activism, but he soon adopted techniques that broke away from convention, like intervening Xeroxed images from photos taken in 35mm film. In addition to creating images and exhibiting them (mostly in collective shows), Mart\u00ednez Castro worked as cultural coordinator, promoter, graphic designer, editor, teacher, writer. Despite leadership roles in groups like the Mexican Photography Council (CMF), Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro also showed his work in non-traditional places, like the infamous Spartacus gay club. Consequently, he didn\u2019t get the same level of recognition as some contemporaries, especially after his death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cDecalogue to Fight \u2018Artistitis\u2019 In the Field,\u201d<\/strong> 1980.[3. \u201c1. Ignore that photography is an ART.; 2. Spy life.; 3. Disregard contests, exhibits and curriculum.; 4. Be the star of your fantasies and photograph them.; 5. Turn your camera into your accomplice.; 6. Review the family album more often.; 7. Don\u2019t buy so many photography magazines.; 8. Don\u2019t admire {Manuel}\u00c1lvarez Bravo<\/u><\/a>, understand him.; 9. Go make photography.; 10. Remember that the road to the Art is not a road; it\u2019s a state of mind.\u201d Originally printed in Artes visuales<\/em>, n. 25, August 1980. Most translations from Spanish in this article are my own.]
\n(Reproduction of Mart\u00ednez Castro text)<\/p>\n

The time frame 1978 \u2013 1988 in Pirates on the Boulevard<\/em> closely links the personal to the political in Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s artivist work. On October 2, 1978, the first public demonstration by the Homosexual Liberation Movement in Mexico City took place during a non-LGBTQ event observing the 10th<\/sup> anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre<\/a><\/u>. In 1988, Mart\u00ednez Castro was diagnosed HIV+ while briefly living in New York City. Curator C\u00e9sar Gonz\u00e1lez<\/span> Aguirre , the main orchestrator of the retrospective, was only a toddler when Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro died of AIDS-related illness in Acapulco in 1992, at age 42. Pirates on the Boulevard<\/em> surveys Mexican LGBTQ histories the curator did not experience, during a period distant enough that names, places and actions have been forgotten, yet close enough that major participants are still around to share testimonies as they continue their activisms. This \u201couting\u201d of Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro was an intergenerational rendezvous, in which 1980s images, histories and discourses of homosexual pride conversed with 2010s queer perspectives and curatorial practices.[4. The timing of the retrospective also invited dialogue with parallel exhibits. At Centro de la Imagen, Mart\u00ednez Castro shared the museum with retrospectives of experimental artists Teo Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a><\/u> (1939 \u2013 1992), a gay Mexican filmmaker based in France who also died of AIDS, and Ricardo Valverde<\/a><\/u> (1946 \u2013 1998), an Arizona- born, Mexican-American multimedia artist based in Los Angeles who befriended Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s artist network. Parallel LGBTQ-related exhibits in the city included Laberintos inexplorados. Entre la misoginia y la lesbofobia<\/a><\/u><\/em>, showcasing the Historical Archive of Feminist Lesbians in Mexico, and El chivo expiatorio: sida + violencia + acci\u00f3n<\/a><\/u><\/em>, addressing AIDS activism in Mexico and containing work by openly HIV artists and activists. There have also been events honoring the forthcoming 50th<\/sup> Anniversary of the Tlatelolco Massacre and the Mexican Student Movement of 1968, events which deeply influenced Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s generation.]<\/u><\/p>\n

In Mexico City, like elsewhere, there are competing notions about the meanings and uses of queer (or cuir). Queer may be randomly or rarely used, contested with skepticism, considered foreign, coexist with local idioms, or be adopted by \u201cpink\u201d marketing.[5. \u201cPink money\u201d (Dinero rosa) was the theme of the 31st International Festival for Sexual Diversity in Mexico City, which also took place over the course of June 2018.] I consider Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s archive of images and the Pirates on the Boulevard exhibit \u201cqueer\u201d in a flexible sense. Queer remains a useful critical position or tool that interrogates and rejects fixed identity categories. However, queer also values and includes \u2013 instead of snubbing as outdated or outr\u00e9 \u2013 the spectrum of identities in the homosexual liberation discourses of the 1970s, Mexico City\u2019s LGBTTTI acronym and \u201csexual diversity\u201d approach, and oppositional terms embraced by alternative groups. Queer engagements with the archives unsettle stable narratives, honor intersectionality and urge multiple readings. This type of approach to LGBTQ archives caused controversy in the past. Pirates on the Boulevard thus builds on 2015\u2019s flawed but groundbreaking Dis-closeted Archives: Specters and Dissident Powers, an exhibit which previously brought Mexican LGBTQ archives to the museum.[6. Controversy soon followed the July 2, 2015 opening of Archivos Desclosetados: Espectros y poderes disidentes at Mexico City\u2019s Museo Universitario del Chopo. (\u201cDisclosetado\u201d was translated as \u201cOut of the Closet\u201d at the museum, which missed the Spanish play on words.) Presented in conjunction with the annual International Festival for Sexual Diversity, the exhibit showcased archival materials documenting the histories of Mexico City\u2019s LGBTQ communities. Nina Hoechtl and Naomi Rinc\u00f3n Gallardo\u2019s curatorial stance<\/a> explained the exhibit intended to be \u201ca mapping through the revisions of collections and archives both public and private, interviews and field research,\u201d structured around the themes of gathering places, activisms and \u201ccultural prosthetics.\u201d]<\/p>\n

2. Queer Engagements<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Juan Jacobo Hern\u00e1ndez and Carlos Toimil, <\/strong>1979
\n(reproduction of FHAR [Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action] pamphlet)<\/p>\n

The images by Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro, like those of his LGBTQ contemporaries outside Mexico, stand out primarily as documents of their time. Echoing the lyric of a famous 1930s Mexican bolero, Pirates on the Boulevard, however, proposed the notion of the \u201cartist as pirate.\u201d[7. The opening lyrics of Agust\u00edn Lara\u2019s \u201cVeracruz\u201d (1936) are: \u201cI was born with the silver moon \/ I was born with a pirate\u2019s soul.\u201d The Mexican composer falsely claimed Veracruz as his birthplace. ] According to the curator, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro produced \u201cpirated images\u201d under the influence of drag aesthetics, breaking with conventional photography techniques and developing his artwork with \u201cone foot in the door of the art institution and a stiletto heel in the life that exists outside of it.\u201d[ C\u00e9sar\u00a0Gonz\u00e1lez<\/span> Aguirre , curatorial statement displayed in Pirates on the Boulevard: Public Demonstrations, 1978- 1988, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, April 19 \u2013 July 15, 2018.] By directly connecting Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s \u201cpirating of images\u201d to Mexican LGBTQ activism and culture, Pirates on the Boulevard contests earlier (brief) assessments that presented the artist as just a chronicler of \u201cthe world of transvestism\u201d who \u201cturns us into voyeurs of an unimagined culture.\u201d[9. Roberto Tejada, \u201cTr\u00edptico urbano,\u201d La ciudad: tres puntos de vista, M\u00e9xico, D.F.: Universidad Aut\u00f3noma Metropolitana, 1993. Quejada\u2019s text shows the language used in the 1990s to value gay artists (without describing the artist as such): \u201cgay semiotics,\u201d \u201ccamp,\u201d \u201ctransvestite parody.\u201d
\nThe notion of Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro as chronicler was repeated in Am\u00e9rica Latina Photographs, 1960 \u2013 2013: \u201cHis images give a true account of underground urban life in Mexico in the 1980s.\u201d Paradoxically, the catalog features images from Expediente 13 (File 13), a series in which Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s interventions of Xeroxed images of tabloids points to their artificiality. Carolina Ariza, \u201cAgust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro,\u201d Am\u00e9rica Latina Photographs, 1960 \u2013 2013, Puebla, Mexico: Museo Amparo & Paris: Fondation Cartier, 2013: p.198-199.]<\/p>\n

Before facing the first Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro image, visitors at Centro de la Imagen are met with an acrylic painting by Antonio Salazar (1956 \u2013 2016)[10. Antonio Salazar co-founded and coordinated the Taller de Documentaci\u00f3n Visual<\/a> (1984 \u2013 1999), an important collective whose artwork intersected art, AIDS and activism.] titled For a Socialism Without Sexism, 1984-90, one of the main slogans of the homosexual liberation movement. Next, a laminated guide offers a 1980 vocabulary of Mexican gay slang (\u201cLocabulario\u201d) by activist Juan Jacobo Hern\u00e1ndez, including a definition of the slur \u201cjoto\u201d (faggot): \u201cthose beings who dress and move funny: the more visible homosexuals, the ones who refuse \u2013 due to tiredness, rebellion or provocation \u2013 to renounce their feminine affectations to adopt macho mannerisms.\u201d[11. Juan Jacobo Hern\u00e1ndez, \u201cLocabulario\u201d, Nuestro Cuerpo. Lenguaje y Opresi\u00f3n, 2-3, July 1980.] On an opposite wall, the curatorial statement opens with a quote of Jos\u00e9 Joaqu\u00edn Blanco\u2019s 1979 important essay about Mexican homosexuality \u201cEyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams\u201d (\u201cOjos que da p\u00e1nico so\u00f1ar\u201d): \u201cShining eyes I dare not meet in dreams because beside them our own would seem blind.\u201d[12. Jose Joaqu\u00edn Blanco, \u201cEyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams [1979],\u201d Trans. Edward A. Lacey. In Gay Roots: Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine, Ed. Winston Leyland, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1991, p.291-296.]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

La Paul o La Mantarraya, <\/strong>1987
\nfrom the Night of Queens at the Spartacus
\n(Noche de reinas en el Spartacus) series<\/p>\n

The first Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro image on the exhibit, displayed by itself next to the statement, is a 1984 photo titled after Blanco\u2019s essay: Prologue: Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams (Pr\u00f3logo: Ojos que da p\u00e1nico so\u00f1ar). The black-and-white image shows four effeminate young men, two of them in female clothes. We only see three of their faces, whose dark skin and indigenous features don\u2019t fit the ideals of white masculinity privileged by gay culture. They all look to the camera, suggesting different attitudes. Striking a pose and returning the photographer\u2019s gaze was a strategy used by Mexican gay men in early photos linking them to crime. Unlike the defiant poses and looks in those photos, a cautious involvement with the photographer seems to be at play in the Mart\u00ednez Castro image, suggested not only by the different ways their eyes \u201cdare\u201d to meet him, but also by the gesture of one hand holding another\u2019s right arm. Their \u201cjoto looks\u201d are the establishing shot of the exhibit, the frame of reference for queer engagement, looking back, daring to meet, to dream.[13. Curiously, though, during talks at Centro de la Imagen related to the exhibit, many participants mentioned a different Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro image as their entry point: a black-and-white photo in which \u201cNo\u201d is written over the right side of a bus.]<\/p>\n

3. Foundational Irruption<\/strong>s<\/p>\n

Three pioneering groups of public gay and lesbian activists formed in 1978: the predominantly male FHAR (Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action), the lesbian Oikabeth[14. Oikabeth is an acronym from the Mayan phrase Ollin iskan katuntat bebeth toth\/ Movement of Warrior Women Who Lead the Way and Spread Flowers.] and the mixed gender Lambda Group of Homosexual Liberation. On July 26, 1978, a small group of FHAR members joined a march that honored the start of the Cuban Revolution and demanded the liberation of political prisoners. FHAR\u2019s first public irruption had a surprising connection to Mexican cinema: statements by actor Roberto Cobo (\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t confuse homosexual and fag [marica]\u201d), then enjoying the success of his acclaimed performance as the cross-dressing La Manuela in the 1978 film The Place Without Limits (El lugar sin l\u00edmites, Arturo Ripstein), triggered actions that led to FHAR\u2019s participation in the July 26 march. Newspapers recorded their participation. A few months later, Oikabeth and the Lambda Group joined FHAR in a student-led march that commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre on October 2. Though it wasn\u2019t a gay and lesbian event, this public \u201couting\u201d is considered the first march of homosexual pride in Mexico City.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fernando Esquivel and Juan Jacobo Hern\u00e1ndez<\/strong>, June 1979<\/p>\n

On June 1979, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro joined FHAR\u2019s co-founders Juan Jacobo Hern\u00e1ndez, Fernando Esquivel and Carlos Toimil during their first \u201cmarkings\u201d (pintas) of public spaces to promote the forthcoming march of homosexual pride, the first one on the last Saturday in June.[15. In light of the exhibit, journalist Antonio Bertr\u00e1n interviewed Juan Jacobo Hern\u00e1ndez about this photo for his weekly column \u201cNosotros los jotos.\u201d See Antonio Bertr\u00e1n, \u201cPutos pintando bardas\u201d, Metro (April 24, 2018): p.7.] While other Mexican photographers produced images of the LGBTQ communities in Mexico City, during a recent talk Hern\u00e1ndez pointed out the significance of Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro as someone who photographed early public gay and lesbian activism \u201cfrom within.\u201d One of the photos shows Hern\u00e1ndez from behind as he finishes writing with black aerosol \u201cJune: Month of Homosexual Pride\u201d on a wall. The position of his head and right arm creates the illusion of completing the word with his body, the L that writes the dot on HOMOSEXUAL. The framing also places Fernando Esquivel (on the right) as the one who looks\u2026 at the message? the body? the fusion of both?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Paulette and Gerardo Ortega, \u201cLa Mema\u201d<\/strong>, June 1980<\/p>\n

The photos of the \u201cmarkings\u201d were among those Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro took in collaboration with FHAR, which reproduced his images on their pamphlets. He also photographed the early marches of homosexual pride. Among the activists seen marching is Gerardo Ortega Zurita, \u201cLa Mema,\u201d who passed away on June 2018. The slogan \u201cArriba los putos\u201d (\u201cUp with the putos\u201d) is visible to the left side of his face. World Cup news coverage has brought international attention to the Mexican slur \u201cputo,\u201d critiquing its homophobic use as a pejorative chant during Mexican soccer games. \u201cPuto\u201d is usually translated as gay male prostitute or male sex worker. It\u2019s a Mexican slur rooted in misogyny and the intersection of male homosexuality with female sexual work \u2013 and sexual availability. A former sex worker, La Mema became a renowned activist and his home in Ciudad Nezahualc\u00f3yotl or \u201cNeza,\u201d on the outskirts of Mexico City, offered refuge to young poor gay men and vestidas (literally \u201cdressed women,\u201d an umbrella term used for transvestite, transsexual and transgender identities).<\/p>\n

La Mema played a significant role in English-language scholarship about Latin American sexualities with the 1998 publication of Mema\u2019s House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens and Machos, by sociologist Annick Prieur.[16. The book built on her doctoral dissertation, published in Norwegian in 1994 with a different title. A Spanish edition, La casa de la mema: travestis, locas y machos, was published in 2008.] Though the language now sounds very 1990s, Prieur\u2019s study offered a welcome point of view that differed from earlier sociological studies and her nuanced analyses contested prevalent notions about Mexican male homosexuality, especially in relation to effeminacy and poverty. Annick Prieur described La Mema, nearing 50 when they met (Prieur says mid 30s) as: \u201cnot the most beautiful\u2026 but he is a good dancer and a skilled seducer of handsome young men.\u201d[17. Annick Prieur, Mema\u2019s House, Mexico City. On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p.7.] In the Mexican gay magazine Del otro lado (From the Other Side), a February 1994 caption described La Mema, then in his mid 50s, as \u201cTorcida, aunque gordita\u201d (Bent, though chubby). Shortly before his death, journalist Antonio Bertr\u00e1n published an interview in which he called the 79-year-old Mema \u201cUna jotita muy cabrona\u201d (more or less: \u201cA very badass little fag\u201d).[18. Antonio Bertr\u00e1n, \u201cUna jotita muy cabrona\u201d, Metro (June 19, 2018): 6.] The three scenarios fondly celebrate La Mema for defying the expectations attached to his background and image.<\/p>\n

4. Queers of the Night<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Agust\u00edn Is a Vile Little Scoundrel (Agust\u00edn es una vil fichita)<\/strong>, 1985
\nfrom the File 13 (Expediente 13) series<\/p>\n

During Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s lifetime, the sensationalist language and imagery of Mexican tabloids maintained the tradition of giving visibility to LGBTQ Mexicans, especially \u201ceffeminates\u201d and \u201ctransvestites,\u201d by linking them to exploitation, criminality and \u201clow culture\u201d (double entendre, gossip, \u201cpopular\u201d humor, cabarets, brothels, photo novels, etc.).[19. Some of Alarma!\u2019s images of \u201cvestidas\u201d were reproduced in the 2014 photo book Mujercitos!, with introductory texts by scholars Cuauht\u00e9moc Medina and Susana Vargas Cervantes.] Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s File 13 series (1985) is a mode of queer engagement with tabloid images in which the artist appropriates, makes fun and rewrites the tabloids. The original Spanish title of Agust\u00edn Is a Vile Little Scoundrel, for example, plays with the meanings of the word \u201cficha,\u201d used in the diminutive, as scoundrel, token or file. This mode of self-portrait also mocks artistic self-representations. On the lower left side, there is a description of Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s exhibition of \u201cphotographies, xerographies and other \u2013phies\u201d (like \u201cjotographies,\u201d a term the artist used). This self-portrait contrasts with an undated photo of the artist, by Gilberto Chen, shown at the exhibit. Mart\u00ednez Castro \u2013 wearing short hair, sunglasses, mustache, T-shirt and jeans, and exhaling smoke with cigarette in hand \u2013 strikes a pose that brings to mind the images of San Francisco white gay masculinity in Hal Fischer\u2019s landmark Gay Semiotics (1977). Both show a playful attitude towards masculine prototypes, which Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro also engaged with in My Playgirl Got Wet, a series which intervened images of naked male bodies that, though marketed to straight women, were also consumed by gay men.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

La Creel,<\/strong> 1987.
\nfrom the Marquee. Homage to Tito Vasconcelos
\n(Marquesina. Homenaje a Tito Vasconcelos) series<\/p>\n

The connection between documentation, \u201cpirated image\u201d and drag aesthetics in Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s work is evident in the series Marquee. Homage to Tito Vasconcelos. In \u201cLa Creel\u201d (1987), for example, Tito Vasconcelos appears as Catalina Creel, the evil eye patch-wearing matriarch from the Mexican soap opera Cradle of Wolves (Cuna de lobos, 1986 \u2013 87), a character rooted in the gay male imagination[20. The story goes that watching the 1968 black comedy The Anniversary sparked the imagination of gay playwright Carlos Olmos. Bette Davis stars as a domineering one-eyed matriarch with color-coordinated eye patches whose middle son shot out her eye with an air gun. Catalina Creel became so popular that cultural critic Carlos Monsiv\u00e1is \u2013 adding another gay dimension to the character \u2013 wrote a 1987 column titled: \u201cCatalina Creel for President.\u201d] and the notion of femininity as drag, whose murderous diva presence added touches of camp and dark humor to an otherwise conventional maternal melodrama.<\/p>\n

A well-known gay artist and activist, Tito Vasconcelos starred in two trailblazing moments in the history of Mexico City \u201cgay theater\u201d also featured in Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s Marquee series. In 1980, Vasconcelos appeared in And Yet, They Move (Y sin embargo, se mueven), a show in which the four gay male cast members \u201ccame out\u201d on stage and whose poster art also appropriated tabloid style.[21. Conceived by composer Jos\u00e9 Antonio Alcaraz (1938 \u2013 2001), the show was presented under the auspices of the theater department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.] In 1984, Vasconcelos starred in Butterflies and Fag-Things (Mariposas y maricosas, I\u2019m borrowing Antonio Prieto\u2019s translation.[22. For an analysis of the show, see Antonio Prieto, \u201cCamp, carpa and cross-dressing in the theater of Tito Vasconcelos,\u201d Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, Edited by Coco Fusco, London and New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 83-96.]), which included his famous characterization as Hollywood diva Joan Crawford and a politicized reinterpretation of Mexican TV cook Chepina Peralta. The performances of Vasconcelos complicated and subverted the notion of being \u201cvestida\u201d through characters with layers of drag and queer associations: Hamlet as rock star by way of Sarah Bernhardt in And Yet, They Move, or Joan Crawford rehearsing different female roles by way of Mommie Dearest in Butterflies and Fag-Things. In his Marquee series, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s intervention of the Tito Vasconcelos\u2019s images added another layer of drag or queer engagement.<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Parade of Winners (Desfile de triunfadoras) (Charo), <\/strong>1988
\nfrom the Night of Queens at the Spartacus (Noche de reinas en el Spartacus) series<\/p>\n

Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro also \u201cpirated\u201d \u2013 to borrow the curatorial term \u2013 the images in his series Night of Queens at the Spartacus. Inaugurated in 1984 by Jorge Cruz Garfias, Spartacus is a notorious gay nightclub located in Neza, an area of ill-repute for being poor and dangerous. From the start, Spartacus featured entertainment with drag queens and go-go boys, and its clientele included vestidas and sex workers. The drag shows, dancers and dark room became legendary, attracting customers from the city and even celebrities (like Spanish pop star Alaska). Besides taking photos, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro used the disco club as exhibition place. In 1988, Mart\u00ednez Castro showed From 10 to 11 p.m. (De 10 a 11 p.m.), a series about the backstage transformations at the Spartacus, thus bringing the images back to where their creation began.<\/p>\n

5. Names of the Game<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

both Untitled, <\/strong>June 1984<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Look of Gay Liberation,\u201d Steven F. Dansky notes that: \u201cParadoxically, most subjects of the early photographs of Gay Liberation, while out enough to be photographed, were not named in any caption and are thus anonymous.\u201d[23.Steven F. Dansky, \u201cThe Look of Gay Liberation,\u201d The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, 16.2 (March\/April 2009): 28.] The untitled Mart\u00ednez Castro photos taken during the marches of homosexual pride also makes the activists anonymous, whether seen from the front or behind. During the 1984 march, activists that year carried signs to denounce homophobic murders. While the subjects of the photos can be identified by those who knew them, anonymity adds power to the political act in the image, as the bodies standing with arms intertwined become collective identities for the names on the signs. The left photo names Spanish actor Rafael Llamas, found dead in his apartment in 1980. The right one names Cuauht\u00e9moc Z\u00fa\u00f1iga, head of the theater department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, murdered in his apartment in 1982, at age 36. This march is considered a turning point in early public gay and lesbian activism in Mexico City. In 1984 clashes between activist groups weakened the notion of collective identity in the movement of homosexual liberation, starting a period of fragmentation that historians extend to the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro wrote a brief text about the reduced participation and growing divisions among activist groups in the 1984 march. He compared it with the June 1980 march, when the public protest against sexist oppression seemed a growing movement.[24. Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro, \u201cEutanasia para el movimiento gay\u201d, La regla rota, Num. 2 (Summer 1984). The title, \u201cEuthanasia for the Gay Movement,\u201d draws from a notorious pamphlet (Eutanasia al movimiento lilo \/Euthanasia to the Lilac Movement) distributed during the 1984 march by the Colectivo Sol (Sun Collective), a group created in 1981 after the dissolution of FHAR.] This weakening of the movement took place around the time the first cases of AIDS were reported. In 1987, Mart\u00ednez Castro published a much longer text dedicated to the virus: \u201cPsychosis \u2013 Irresponsibility \u2013 Disinformation \u2013 Sensationalism. The Other Face of the Disease.\u201d[25. Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro, \u201cSicosis \u2013 Irresponsabilidad \u2013 Desinformaci\u00f3\u00f3n \u2013 Amarillismo. La otra cara de la enfermedad\u201d, La regla rota, Num. 4 (1987).] (In Spanish, the first part of the title forms the acronym SIDA [AIDS].) Starting with the sentence \u201cThe problem is serious,\u201d the article reports the different ideas circulating about the virus and denounces poor public health treatments and sensationalist media coverage.<\/p>\n

Two parts stood out for me. On the second section, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro names two patients \u2013 first name only \u2013 whose fates were affected by prejudice. To\u00f1o, to whom the article is dedicated, was a doctor who erroneously received treatment for leukemia. His colleagues didn\u2019t know about his sexual orientation and didn\u2019t think he could have a \u201cfaggot\u2019s disease\u201d (\u201cenfermedad de putos\u201d). Ricardo, on the other, committed suicide after being mistreated as an AIDS patient, though he was likely misdiagnosed solely for being homosexual. Towards the end of the article, the tone of the article shifts with a humorously ironic \u201cQuestionnaire to alleviate paranoia and lift the spirit\u201d (Cuestionario para atenuar la paranoia y elevar el espiritu)\u201d that places the AIDS virus in the broader context of other social struggles. Published the year before Mart\u00ednez Castro tested positive, the article is especially interesting given the small number of explicitly AIDS-related artwork at the retrospective, which ends precisely on the year of his diagnosis.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

from the Memorial Quilt series, June 1988<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1988, while in New York City, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro photographed the touring AIDS Memorial Quilt and tested positive to HIV. The fatefulness of that trip to New York gives added poignancy to his photos of the quilt. They are tight shots that reframe the panels and privilege certain details, creating a feeling of intimacy. At times, Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s images eliminate the names and dates in the panels to strong effect. His photo of lovers Paul Fitzsimmons and David Aurand, unidentified by Mart\u00ednez Castro, favors Paul\u2019s loving look over David. Erasing the names and dates makes them anonymous, but it also offers a more intimate look at the couple than when the full panels are seen side by side. Their heads are shown in half, looking in different directions, in panels of different colors, increasing the sense of loss and separation caused by the disease.<\/p>\n

6. Blue Prelude<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

from The Lips of The Hole (Los labios de El Hoyo) series, 1987<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blue has got hope in it, always.
\n\u2013 Derek Jarman, 1993[26. Quoted in Ken Shulman, \u201cWhen Creation Fills a Deathly Silence: Derek Jarman Finds Hope in \u2018Blue\u2019\u201d, New York Times (October 3, 1993): 25.]<\/p>\n

Pirates on the Boulevard ended with an attention-grabbing sign of pleasure (goce): red neon lips, a contemporary recreation of a 1987 sculpture titled Of Burning Purple (De p\u00farpura encendido). On the opposite wall, a photo showed two men mooning the camera with their hairy asses, creating the effect that the neon lips kissed them. This last section of the exhibit paired two series of images about Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s affective complicities with friends and lovers. The photos in The Lips of The Hole (1987) series were taken at a property in the Colonia Roma district that was partially ruined by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro and other artist friends and lovers appropriated the space to use it as a clandestine lair for artistic and sexual experimentation, exhibition and performance.[27. The Lips of The Hole series includes explicit images not shown in the exhibit. During a tour, the curator explained his decision to exclude them. In addition to pointing out the limitations of space, he proposed, \u201cI think there are images better left unseen, anonymous. There are other images that one can imagine, that could be interesting as evocations, not as visible.\u201d C\u00e9sar Gonz\u00e1lez<\/span> Aguirre , Guided Tour of Pirates on the Boulevard, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, May 18, 2018.]<\/p>\n

The hallway at the museum led visitors to end their tour of Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro\u2019s work with a neon red kiss, but I would like to read against the grain and end my brief looks with shades of blue. In 1982, Mart\u00ednez Castro collaborated with friend Mar\u00eda Eugenia Chellet to make a series of slides in which they playfully intervened with the visual imaginary of heterosexual desire created in relation to the popular songs of Mexican composer Agust\u00edn Lara.[28. In 1984, Agust\u00edn Mart\u00ednez Castro edited a photo book also titled Blue: \u201ca free (and arbitrary) evocation of nostalgia at the wrong time.\u201d] Blue (Azul) is titled after an early 1930s Lara song indelibly associated to the composer\u2019s image as bohemian dandy and lover of women. It has a melancholy melody, accompanied by some very Lara-esque imagery: \u201cblue, like the bag under a woman\u2019s eye, like a blue ribbon, blue of morning\u201d (azul, como una ojera de mujer, como un list\u00f3n azul, azul de amanecer), that immediately puts the listener in nostalgic mood.[29. \u201cAzul\u201d was memorably used in the 1991 Mar\u00eda Novaro film Danz\u00f3n, which also engages with the romanticism of 1930s & 40s Mexican popular music. The song plays, first as instrumental and then sung by Carmen Salinas, during a post-coital scene in which the heroine (Mar\u00eda Rojo) lights up a cigarette in bed while her much younger sailor lover sleeps next to her.] During a recent event at Centro de la Imagen, Mar\u00eda Eugenia Chellet presented the slide show and later warned against the misperception of Agust\u00edn Lara\u2019s romantic songs as kitsch. She noted the sincerity of feeling attached to his compositions and the Blue collaboration. I will add that its imagery – which many would find dated and laughable – is as valid a sign of queer pleasure and sexuality as the neon red lips, in which the dagger-like eyes of divas like Mar\u00eda Felix could be daring us to indulge in the queerest of dreams.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

from the Blue (Azul) <\/strong>series, 1982
\nby Agustin Martinez Castro and Mar\u00eda Eugenia Chellet<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Medi\u00e1tico proudly presents a broad ranging account of a recent exhibition of the photographic work of Mexican queer artist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[245,87],"tags":[248,249,250,246,247,39],"class_list":["post-2064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photography","category-queer","tag-1970s","tag-1980s","tag-1990s","tag-agustin-martinez-castro","tag-lbgtq","tag-mexico"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/files\/2018\/08\/1-MartinezCastroChelletAzul-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49QSj-xi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2064"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2122,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064\/revisions\/2122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}