Art, when it comes out of itself to explore the world around it, acquires the ability to become an almost perfect synonym for debate.
Artists thus become manufacturers of ideas, sculptors of concepts that make them visible and malleable.
If there is today a conversation that monopolizes the interest of creative thinking, it would be that of the gender issue.
An artist of non-binary gender because, she says, she distrusts "the norm and fear leads me to disobedience", Wynnie Mynerva (Lima, 1993) has put the body, in its most literal sense, to place this discourse in the heart of the public square.
More information
Between tradition and innovation: Mans dresses the space of EL PAÍS in Arco
These days, that agora throbs in the pavilions of Ifema, the Madrid fairgrounds in whose industrial buildings galleries, artists and works from all corners of the planet are concentrated under the umbrella of Arco.
Mynerva's, which could well be defined as stark, has been revealed as the controversial piece that every year, almost inevitably, makes headlines at the fair.
With the illuminating title of
Close to Open,
the work consists of an installation presided over by a video that documents, in the foreground, part of the intervention to which she underwent to sew "about three quarters" of the opening of her vagina.
Another of the images of the work of Wynnie Mynerva.Alejandro Martínez Vélez (Europa Press)
“Art is a record of humanity, a way of documenting what people think and what their demands are”, illustrates Mynerva, who participates in Arco with the Lima gallery Ginsberg, on the theoretical basis on which she bases her project.
Raised in a context of violence and immersed in what she defines as "the country of misogyny",
He is aware that this framework has been defining when building his personal identity and his creative vision, both sides of the same coin.
With her work, which aspires to be a message of “fight for our rights”, Mynerva understands that she appeals to “a broader sector”: a global and transversal community that transcends her as a person.
"Freedom only exists when it is used," she defends.
"And with this project I feel that I gain quality of life."
close to open
it aspires to also become, as she explains, a way of “reconciling myself with my vagina”, the organ that tied her to a femininity that she has wanted to get rid of in order to reappropriate her own body.
The video collects only part of the operation of what she calls "something like a sex reassignment", since the intervention was carried out illegally.
The work, explicit and at the same time monotonous, was already exhibited in Peru in 2021, although the reception was different, perhaps more extreme, than the one it is receiving in Madrid.
"In Lima there are people who think very conservatively, and their reaction is to fall into denial of my work," explains Mynerva, who wears a striking metallic miniskirt and platform boots, whose presence attracts all kinds of curious onlookers like a magnet. , photographers and journalists.
Wynnie Mynerva, next to his work 'Close to open' in Arco.Alejandro Martínez Vélez (Europa Press)
As on this occasion, all her previous works are traversed by the paths where gender, sex and sexuality intersect and where they fork.
Through all kinds of media, from painting to
performance
, the
happening
and sculpture, Mynerva has approached issues such as prostitution, abortion and pleasure from the first person.
In his first project,
The other sex,
he created "an inventory of sexual organs" that he wanted to take (unsuccessfully) to the Lima institutes, and that ended up closing, according to his account, the gallery where it was going to be exhibited a week before the inauguration. .
In
sex machine
raised a reflection on how "to generate pleasure you don't have to resort to organs or biological parts".
In the
happening El Jardín de las Delicias,
he invited whoever wanted to have sex inside latex bags, "generating a dreamlike landscape for people to enjoy their freedom."
And in the
performance I am a beginning and an end
, she ate the remains of her own abortion.
“To talk about me is to talk about similar people”, she clarifies about the perspective from which she understands her work.
"I think these are important issues and I'm not alone."
The idea of “leaving a mark of her desire” by closing her vagina came from afar for Mynerva, who trained at the National School of Fine Arts in Peru, and whose individual work has been exhibited in her country, as well as in New York and, now, Madrid.
"I wanted to do this operation for a long time, because I don't use the vagina to have sex and I don't want to be a mother," she says.
“There is a social, political and cultural fabric that crosses us as human beings, and I wanted to leave a mark through art,” she adds.
In short, it is about “expressing the concerns of humanity and gaining space in reality”.
In a context where “it seems that there are no possibilities beyond the penis and the vagina”, Mynerva, who does not consider herself to be a woman or a man, wanted to propose and, above all, materialize an alternative.
"I don't want to die without achieving the rights and freedoms that I want for the future," he sums up.
"Each work I've done has been like gaining a space of freedom for me," he says about his future plans.
"And when you think you've won some battles, suddenly others open up."