Action – Performance, Berlin, 2017
A project by Tomás Espinosa in collaboration with Artúr van Balen

Mi cuerpo es mio y hago con él lo que yo quiera. “My body is mine and I do what I want with it,” was the phrase Daniela said while handing out flowers on the street of Santa Fé in Bogota. It was her way of making people on the street aware of the dissolution of gender roles, to oppose the everyday discriminatory looks and to raise awareness about her reality as a transgender person. This action and this sentence are the inspiration for the performance “Mi cuerpo es mío”.

For the Future Nows festival, Tomás Espinosa and Artúr van Balen transform the outdoor area of the Hamburger Bahnhof into a backdrop of floating objects. The performers will carry inflatable figures across the courtyard that, when assembled, create an oversized sculpture and form a choreography of light, sound and movement. The objects puzzle the viewer and lie on the edge between attraction and intimidation. The performance combines stylistic elements from vogueing, fetish, the fashion scene, as well as elements of carnival.

The Hamburger Bahnhof is the first station of a series of future actions of this kind.The sculptures will eventually be folded and inflated again for a next action at Gay Pride in Bogota 2018, in collaboration with Red Comunitaria Trans (Association of Transgender People) to increase their visibility in the streets of Bogotá. “Mi cuerpo es mio” is the first collaboration between the two artists.