Odete is the winner artist of the first edition of RExFORM – International Performance Project, which was born from the collaboration between BoCA and MAAT.
In the performance “MTF Priestesses Cutting The Bone to Reveal It’s Lie”, Odete proposes a critical approach to the historical silence around the issues of the body, gender identity and the queer world. According to the artist, it is the “culmination of a work on the shadows and politics” that has been developing since she started her artistic career. “I want to present a project that conspires against the writing of history in the sense of inscribing certain bodies and practices in it. And this inscription is made through a lying writing about the past, thus revealing the techniques of producing the truth of that same story that erased us. This project is, at heart, a paranoid archaeological project”, describes the artist.
The project consists of three parts – a magic book, a video game and a performance – and aims to fictionalize a secret society that presents itself linked to names like Joana d’Arc, Eliogabalus or Chevalier D’Eon, of which the artist claims to be a descendant.
The choice was made by a jury composed by MAAT director Beatrice Leanza, Tate Modern’s senior performance curator, Catherine Wood, the director of performing arts at Center Pompidou, Chloé Siganos, and BoCA’s artistic director, John Romão.