Afield Portrait – Renata Carvalho

Renata Carvalho was awarded the 2020 AFIELD Fellowship for MONART – National Movement of Trans Artists, which questions the absence, exclusion, misrepresentation and misunderstanding of travesti / trans bodies in the arts and professional society across Brazil.

Renata Carvalho (1981, Brazil) is an actress, theatre maker and transpologist (transgender anthropologist). She has been studying the travesti / trans corporeality as a research she calls ‘transpology’ to challenge the dehumanizing social constructions that permeate the common sense imaginary of what it means to be trans. She founded MONART (National Movement of Trans Artists) and created the Trans Representativeness Manifesto which challenges the practice of ‘trans fake’ (when trans roles are played by cisgender actors). She is also responsible for COLETIVO T, the first art collective solely formed by transgender artists in São Paulo.