Giuseppe Campuzano, Tropo [Trope], Letanía [Litany], Cifra [Number], 2012. Silkscreen on 250 gr. Schoellershammer paper, 19 11/16 × 13 9/16 in. Museum purchase, Wachenheim Family Fund, M. 2020.11.1 and M.2020.11.2; Gift of Miguel A. López in honor of Giuseppe Campuzano, M.2020.11.3.

Giuseppe Campuzano’s digital collage series both enacts and rejects the social politics surrounding queer and trans identity. Three portraits of feminized “types” juxtaposed with cut-out Spanish-language newspaper headlines explore pervasive stereotypes around gender and sexuality. They implicate the media in shaping public consciousness and reinforcing the negative assumptions that lead to harmful repercussions on the lives of trans people. Images combined with text place the collages in a lineage of artistic movements like Dada that used collage to draw attention to social and political issues.

About the artist

Performance artist, drag queen, and philosopher Giuseppe Campuzano made work that spanned a wide range of disciplines and practices, typically coalescing around their own understanding of and identity as a trasvesti, a culturally specific term for transgender experiences in South America. They are best-known for the genre-defying Museo Travesti del Peru, an archival, artistic traveling museum dedicated to a long history of transgender, transsexual, and trasvesti experience in Peru. The Museo offers a counter-narrative to dominant histories of gender and normativity. Campuzano was a 2013 recipient of a grant from the Foundation for Arts Initiatives and was posthumously awarded a Medal of Honor from the Escuela Nacional Superior Autónoma de Bellas Artes del Perú. Their work has been exhibited at El Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelona and at Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, among others.