Towards the formation of a transformist genealogy in the city of Buenos Aires

Spaces, artists, practices

Abstract

Prior to the creation of nighttime festive spaces where drag practices developed in the city of Buenos Aires since the 2010s, there were a significant number of artists, practices, environments and artifacts that contained similar manifestations. Since they varied throughout the decades, the drag performances that appeared in contemporary spaces are different from those that took place previously, but they share common features. This paper seeks to bring together manifestations that occurred previously in different spheres in order to contextualize contemporary practices. In order to carry out the conformation of a genealogy of drag manifestations, the starting point was the gathering and analysis of archival materials in different preservation media: artists' personal archives, materials made available at art exhibitions, elements available on Internet pages that keep the memory of practices, and annotations and materials that I have kept over the years. I propose that, between 1900 and 2023 in the city of Buenos Aires, drag practices were able to appear in different environments, artifacts, artistic disciplines and sustain themselves over time. This places them as manifestations legitimized by their own trajectory and shows them as a central part not only of the dissident sex-gender community, but also of the local artistic field, while linking them to celebration, artifice and the issue of identity.