‘Talking with the Swiss’ is a journey through Switzerland, where I am a student, a guest, vaguely supported, often unwelcome, forced to be vegetarian and a user of Bumble and OkCupid apps. I speak of the toxic relationship I maintain with Switzerland; that’s why I choose to orient from Zurich and not Cusco. I see Zurich as the pinnacle of the trans bourgeoisie, because it encompasses a life of luxury, resources, and knowledge. Here, I have seen extractivism at its peak. Where, from my perspective, being trans is awarded a privileged status. And when I encountered this in Zurich, I was dazzled.
Since the end of 2019, from afar, until the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been drawing, thinking, yearning, and mentally conversing with artists and people who live in or have passed through Switzerland. This is why I frame all of my recent work under the title ‘Talking with the Swiss’, as a heading for a period in which I have also worked on and continue to work on ‘Disforia’, ‘Transsexual Ministry’, and ‘Low(v)er Engadin’.
In 2024, I managed to meet many people through this proposal, addressing topics such as transmasculinity, porch aesthetics, free transition, white education. Going deeper into these subjects, I was interested in discussing the social and economic aspects of integrating into the art market, transitioning legally/physically, claiming community, exoticization, taking advantage of nationalist sentiment, and negotiations with educational and/or artistic institutions.
Adding to the mix is the decline of progress or acceptance that many artists from the Global South have or had in seeking out to make their lives in European destinations, especially Switzerland (myself included). After the pandemic, the global colonial apparatus explicitly and radically affected the contemporary art context for artists, who face pressures to adhere to institutional agendas. The world became more sensitized, and discourses today are shifting towards restitution, repair, and the romanticizing of poverty, starting to look inward, perhaps for the first time. And just as these developments send artists from the Global South northwards, artists from my generation are leaving Europe and the USA to go live in the Sacred Valley, in Cuzco, a move which can be read both as ideological and as a strategy for increasing visibility.
‘Talking with the Swiss’ provides a picture I have yet to see of transmasculine experiences, including other people’s transmasculine experiences. This publication is situated at an uncomfortable juncture because it seeks to accommodate various political positions between different fields that ideologically do not communicate with each other. Talking about personal confessions and privilege is challenging to all parties. It makes us vulnerable and puts our work and reputations at risk.
After almost a year of gathering conversations and questioning statements and certainties about transmasculine people, mainly in Zurich, I conclude that without recognition or money, there is no interest, commitment, sense of debt, and much less a responsibility to share and circulate this information. A person from Peru asking to speak with someone from Switzerland or living in Switzerland about “art and gender” is far more complicated than one might imagine. For that reason, I called the first part of the publication “Operation Scam”
because whereas the path for Global North artists to work with Global South artists is completely possible and well trodden, the reverse does not apply.
I refrain from publishing most of the conversations, as they were framed by superficiality, distrust, and the repetition of politically correct phrases, to which I too had to adapt at some point in order to be accepted. I do not only attribute this to the hierarchy of power, but also to the fact that knowledge about us (transmasculine people) is very recent, new and fresh, and we are in a moment of constructing its leap from theoretics into actualization. I am interested in trying to go beyond the polarized reductionism of supporting or opposing medical and social changes. Self-criticism is also possible, and I remain optimistic about it. Finally, this catalog allows me to point out aspects that perhaps today we are not ready to engage but which we can confront in the future, as an important piece to understanding the full picture.
I am deeply grateful to those who invited and allowed me to fall in love with Switzerland. Capitalism and love have taken control of my being.