Luiz Roque
Concert:
Mavi Veloso
Travesti Biológica
20 July 24
Entrance 8 pm, start concert 9 pm
Venue: KW Courtyard
Travesti Biológica is a performative concert by Mavi Veloso of her eponymous album released by BicudaRec in early 2022. Spanning elements of pop, R&B, hip hop, trap, electropop, synth pop, dance, tecnobrega, and reggaeton, Travesti Biológica can be described as a trans-genre-electro pop music and performance project that challenges beauty norms and attempts to maintain a so-called “natural” hegemony of cis-gendered existence. Instead, Travesti Biológica empowers and celebrates the beauty and resilience of trans and non-binary bodies.
The title itself is a provocation, and a response to the normative uses of the terms “nature,” “biology” or “reality,” often conjured to establish and justify a societal order in which cis-gendered people are held as the norm from which transgender, intersex, and non-binary people “deviate.” The biological tranny identifies as femme. She may have a transgender penis, or not. She may have a biologically, psychologically, medically perfect vagina, female, male or both, or none at all. She is not concerned about genitalia. She makes herself strong as a femme, multi-spirited person. She makes herself powerful as transvestigenere*.
The larger project Travesti Biológica—comprising the album, the performative concert and a series of music videos—focuses on Mavi Veloso’s personal narratives as a Latin American travesti** migrating from Brazil to Europe. It also speaks to the diaspora of trans women more generally, their oppression, battle to survive, and need to discover new horizons.
Singer / Performer: Mavi Veloso
Performer: Pauli Scharlach
Sound Artist: URUBU Marinka
Transdisciplinary by essence, Mavi Veloso integrates her experience as a performer, visual artist, singer and music producer in powerful stage performances combining pop with different styles such as R&B, trap, house and Brazilian rhythms. In her creative process Mavi explores performativity, the relationship between artist and audience, trans feminism, decolonization, sexual anxiety, survival, resistance and empowerment.
Pauli Scharlach is a trans-multi-disciplinary artist in continuous transit between the fields of photography, video, costume design, painting and performance to research the possible meanings of trans-boarding. As a Brazilian immigrant in Europe, Pauli is compulsively creating strategies to break and cross borders of virtual, material and trans, gender and identity topics.
URUBU Marinka aka Marina Sarno is a Brazilian artist, coming from northeastern Brazilian city Salvador de Bahia, who began her activity in the visual arts in São Paulo. Over the years her work turned more into art for the ears than for the eyes. She did so with her traveling solo project URUBU and as a member of the international artist collective Voodoohop. Each time she develops a broader and diverse exploration of all corners of the musical spectrum.
*Transvestigenere is a term used in Brazil to that refers to the non-binary, trans and travesti population.
**Travesti is a once-pejorative term trans people in Brazil and South America have reclaimed.