Decolonial Excesses

Racial and Sexual Dissidence in Johan Mijail's Amor Vegetal

Bibliographic Data

ID2170507
AuthorsElena Valdez (corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume33
Issue2
Pages261-277
Publication date2024-04-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9325 • E-ISSN: 1469-9575
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569325.2024.2359674
OpenAlexW4400959511
LanguageEN
References cited19

Johan Mijail (1990), born in the Dominican Republic, stands out a trans performer who systematically seeks to destabilize heteronormative culture and colonial legacies ingrained in the politics of race, gender, and sexuality. In her most famous performance Amor vegetal (2015), the naked artist does headstands while inserting small branches, leaves or flowers in her rectum. By placing the "obscene" at the center of her work, Mijail creates alternative knowledge that challenges traditional values of homophobia, Catholicism, and fear of Blackness, all located at the heart of libidinal politics in Abya Yala. In Amor vegetal the artist creates a procto-poetics of the obscene through excess, which offers up the anus/ass as a transfeminist, decolonial, and countersexual axis

Art · Humanities · Sociology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez

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