Sunday, April 9, 2023

Transgender Art


A new online artwork exploring a personal archive of a trans life will launch on Saturday 1st April. 

Mandy Romero is a creative artist and transgender provocateur whose work has taken her across continents and round the world, whilst also staying close to her native lands. She has worked with live performance, film, photography, site-specific actions and web-based writing and continues to have fun in each and every medium.


The online site, launching on Trans Day of Visibility, is designed to explore what it is to be trans, bringing together a wide range of information to provide clarity about what being trans is and means, from the perspective of a trans artist. 

TReasured is a collaborative online artwork inspired by Mandy Romero’s personal archive accumulated over 35 years. An anthology of short films, original writing, and photography will link together with collected ephemera from her productions, to create a poetry of transgender. It will launch on Transgender Day of Visibility, on Saturday 1st April, with a special event at Museum of Liverpool. 

Mandy Romero is a creative artist and transgender provocateur whose work has taken her across continents and round the world, whilst also staying close to her native lands. She has worked with live performance, film, photography, site-specific actions and web-based writing. 


TReasured has been created with several artists; web designers, film maker, an archivist and a literary mentor. It is hoped this ever growing encyclopedia will inspire new performances.

The site, designed for browsing on both mobile phones/tablets and computers, will open with a set of images expressing poetic ideas which capture the manifold realities of the transgender life. Public interest in transgender has increased greatly in the last ten years and this work will serve to supply that interest with new sources of information

It could be considered as a catalog of an exhibition, or of an auction-sale for the disposal of the contents of a house. The overall aim is to increase interest in, and the amount of reference material in circulation about, trans-ness in its many manifestations, and to encourage a playful and open-minded approach to it.
Mandy Romero says,

‘It’s a way of gathering together all the things i’ve collected over the years that relate

to and in some senses just express what it is all about to be trans, to transition, to transform and to do the adventurous things in the world that have to do with gender - TReasured brings together a lot of very diverse information and perspectives and testimony and images and trivia and brings it all together to create a real sense of what the world of trans is all about.It’s a switchback ride through a fairground of perspectives on things and journeys - so you make up your own understanding of what it is that trans is all about.’


More about Treasured here





MANDY'S TAKE ON THE COLLECTION


‘It’s a way of gathering together all the things i’ve collected over the years that relate

to and in some senses just express what it is all about to be trans, to transition, to transform and to do the adventurous things in the world that have to do with gender -


In the last 20 year there’s been a huge increase in public attention the amount of

attention being paid to trans, and that’s good, of course, but with attention comes controversy,

argument, issues, lots of different types of negativities as well as positivities. At this moment in time, we need a little bit of clarity and overview - a lot of people are getting tired of the debate and a bit confused about the issues so this site TReasured brings together a lot of very diverse information and perspectives and testimony and images and trivia and brings it all together to create a real sense of what the world of trans is all about.


Soon I’ll also invite people to contribute to it and it will become an ongoing living archive of all the important things people need to know about trans. It’s a switchback ride through a fairground of perspectives on things and journeys - so you make up your own understanding of what it is that trans is all about.’ 

- Mandy Romero



Mandy Romero began her Live Art career at Liverpool's 2002 Biennial in a performance piece produced by Guillermo Gomez-Pena. Previous to that she had begun performing on the first of her "Dragging Round the World" circumnavigations of the globe. In 2003 she was one of three Associate Artists in Live Art at the Liverpool Bluecoat Arts Centre where, amongst a number of works created, she premiered the "live" version of her transgender epic "The Mandayana". After the second of her global tours in 2004 she was given a Fellowship in Live Art by the Arts Council to spend two months in residence at the Cable Factory in Helsinki. In 2005 she extended her involvement with the Liverpool Tate through a number of gallery-based performances and trained in Improvisation with Andrew Morrish the Australian dancer/improviser in Amsterdam.

Official Launch: The site will be launched on Transgender Day Of Visibility (TDoV), April 1st 2023 with a launch event at Liverpool Museum. Other significant dates + performances TBA.

Contact details + addresses:
https://www.facebook.com/mandy.romero.104/
https://mandyromero.net/

https://linktr.ee/tr.easured
https://www.instagram.com/mandy_la_romero/

https://www.instagram.com/tr.easured

Generously supported by Arts Council England, Homotopia Festival, Writing on the Wall, National Museums Liverpool and Metal Liverpool.

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