Brazilian Drag Superstars in Bolsonaro's Era
2019
7 3/4″ x 10″
Risograph and Digital Printing
Selected as one of the best 50 covers of the year by AIGA, this 100-page publication aims to analyze the images that are built by Brazilian drag superstars Pabllo Vittar, Gloria Groove, and Linn da Quebrada, inserted in the context of Brazil, a country that has elected Jair Bolsonaro as president.
Relating mainly to how pop and the internet have been a medium of expression, agents for the construction of our identity, and perhaps even a weapon to combat the patriarchy and heteronormativity. But by coincidence (or not), they fail (or not) and also give rise to fake news, WhatsApp chains, a country with the highest LGBT murder rate, a ‘gay conversion therapy’ law approved in 2017, and now a fascist president.
Pop and the internet are egalitarian; pop and the internet are for everyone. Thus, pop and the internet can be viewed as a double-edged sword, held by both the victimizer and the victim, which serves as both a tool and a medium of resistance and/or propaganda.
The publication is a collection of materials that explain not why but how those realities are living in the same country and who are the public characters of these stories.
Editing, Art Direction, and Graphic Design
Commissioned by:
Self-Initiated
Tags:
Publication, Book, Riso.