Colectivo Ayllu / Migrantes Transgresorxs

Collective formed 2009 in Madrid, Spain Lives and works in Madrid

Alex Aguirre Sánchez born 1973 in Quito, Ecuador Leticia/Kimy Rojas born 1969 in Guayaquil, Ecuador Francisco Godoy Vega born 1983 in Santiago, Chile Lucrecia Masson born 1981 in Ombucta, Argentina Yos Piña Narváez born 1984 in Caracas, Venezuela

“Through a labyrinthine tour of four stations (‘eat gold!, insatiable white conquero’; ‘our genders are ancestral drifts’; ‘Pachakuti mood’; and ‘Around the world: my body is a checkpoint / my body is a borderline’) this multimedia installation is proposed as an Andean huaca – fundamental Inca sanctuaries, tombs, mummies, sacred places and animals – which will act as a critique of Western and heteronormative constructions present in the Spanish colonial project inaugurated in 1492, in which dogs played a fundamental role as a tool of torture and oppression. This repressive project did not end in the colony.”

Colectivo Ayllu/ Migrantes Transgresorxs’ installation at Artspace is ‘a collaborative research and artistic political action group formed by migrants, people of color, queer and sexual-gender dissidents from the ex-Spanish colonies’. Their brave installation draws upon long memories of colonial pain and inserts contemporary realities of violence from the ‘new dogs’ of racist institutionalised practice that most do not experience. This oppression from the border to the detention centre to modern technologies of control is for the collective an extremely difficult and stressful way of living in the world. As they express: ‘In 2020 we, Black and Indigenous sodomites, are still alive and with wounds we dance the pain away.’ Colectivo Ayllu/ Migrantes Transgresorxs is a collaborative research and artistic-political action group formed by migrants, people of color, and queer and sexual-gender dissidents from the ex-Spanish colonies. The collective proposes a critique of white supremacy and European colonial heteronormative ideology. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from Australian Print Workshop and Open Society Foundations, and assistance from Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and NIRIN 500 patrons. Courtesy the artists. Printed in collaboration with Martin King and Simon White, Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne. Colectivo Ayllu/ Migrantes Transgresorxs would like to thank all the ancestors that have protected them in this process. They would like to acknowledge QPOC that collaborated with them in the production of this work: Cecilia Barriga, La Niña Mai, Danny Arcos, Angello Vivar, Navaja, Fátima Guariota, Nayare Montes, Daniela Ortiz; the Voguing’s workshop participants: Jeannette Tineo, Manuela Villa, Fabiana Castro, Ahmed; the team at the Australian Print Workshop and the Centre for Artistic Residency of Matadero, Madrid