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5 years ago
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by Beláxis Buil
We met a few years back. Our meeting encounter happened during an exhibition Intersectionality, 2016 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, Florida. Eurydice Kamvyselli struck me as a woman who resists nonsense, but more so, foolishness from any opponent who questions her prerogative. But her confrontation is directed towards men (since it has been men creating most sex scandals), and rescuing our vaginas and womanhood, as an agency. Her ammunition deeply roots in communication and literature, with an array of published books on sexual identity, investigations on socio-sexual practices and the raging plague of sexual violation women face every day.
In her first novel, F/32, she tells the story of a "woman's vagina abandoning her body as a stranger on the street is assaulting her." It is not to say Eurydice has a problem with sex, but more specifically, she reminds us of how women are silenced when faced with the woe of the patriarchs' contamination of its true meaning and intention. After all, sex should be an element of power for women in both public and private spaces, not a transactional feature as compromised in Western capitalism.
Her practice as a writer, visual artist, speaker, and activist has given her a voice: one that aims to dismantle "the patriarchy that binds women to its words, laws, paradigms, and aesthetics." Since the #METOO movement, Eurydice grabbed the "bull by its horns" and commenced a new project: SpeakSex Podcas[...]
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6 years ago
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One of the things I used to detest so much as a child was watching the Spanish actress Charo shaking her ass and screaming out “cuchi, cuchi!" on stage. Her famous act would make my blood boil. Please, Charo, forgive me (for we are both Spanish, Latin women) but you're capitalizing on broken English and the need to be sexy all the time, and I wonder if you helped shape the brand, image for Latin women.
There is more to my personal history with Charo's legacy than growing up watching her on television: my paternal grandmother was a performer too and there was a crossing of paths between these influential Latin women. Seeing such a beautiful Latin woman depicted in Charo’s characteristic way was beyond me. I questioned this image constantly, wondering about the advantages of being famously sexy and vulnerable. As opposed to all the women in my family who were immigrants and championed higher education. They worked as professionals, speaking fluent English, and every single one of them was extraordinarily attractive.
On one hand, I saw Charo as a brilliant entrepreneur. She seized the opportunity to commoditize a stereotype and hence became a star with a net worth of twelve billion dollars. In a society where money is synonymous with power, that is a ton of power.
In contrast to Charo's sexy Latina character, Panamanian artist Sandra Eleta tapped into another Latin female stereotype by photographing housemaids, albeit, with a much different attitude depicted in her su[...]
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