2023-07-29 22:00:00
In Arles, a exposition offers a dive into the heart of a clandestine refuge where transvestites affirmed their difference in McCarthyist America. The Casa Susanna exhibition is on display at the Espace Van Gogh, until September 24. “In 2004, two antique dealers discovered three hundred and forty photographs from the 1950s and 1960s on a New York flea market. The singularity of these images lies in the fact that the men who appear in them are disguised as women and that their feminine identity is that of the “respectable housewife”, the girl next door or the lady patroness. No more feathers and exaggerated make-up of the cabaret: here, just perfect hostesses in the intimacy of their interior”, explain Isabelle Bonnet and Sophie Hackett, the two curators of the exhibition. “Behind these photographs hides, in reality, a vast clandestine network of transvestite men. They are married, good fathers of the American white middle class. They are engineers, airline pilots or civil servants in federal agencies. They embody the American dream. And his nightmare. Because the America of those years was also that of segregation, racial, sexual or political. It is the America of the Cold War which censors, represses, excludes and tracks down all disobedience to normative injunctions, from transvestites to homosexuals”. At Casa Susanna, Susanna, Virginia, Doris, Fiona, Gail, Felicity, Gloria and their friends have built a singular and unique collective identity, reflected in this exhibition. “Despite its current pejorative connotation, we have chosen to use the term ‘transvestite’ for the sake of historical consistency. In French, we have no other words to translate “transvestite” or “crossdresser”, how they defined their practice. Most of the members of the Casa Susanna network and of the association formed by Virginia Prince have always distinguished their transvestism from a transidentity”, point out Isabelle Bonnet and Sophie Hackett. On this same subject, we can only recommend seeing the documentary film Casa Susanna by Sébastien Lifshitz, in collaboration with Isabelle Bonnet (co-production ARTE France, Agat Films and American Experience Films in association with BBC Storyville, 2022), presented on Arte.
Casa Susanna, Espace Van Gogh (18 place Félix-Rey – 13200 Arles), until September 24, 2023.
1690675580
#Susanna #House #exposed #Seronet
