“The Moon”

Élle de Bernardini is a transgender woman, artist and dancer, whose works are largely permeated by her biography. Her works address the intersection between issues of gender, sexuality, politics and identity with the history of humanity and art. Her work has been exhibited in national institutions such as the São Paulo Museum of Art/MASP, the São Paulo State Art Gallery, the Rio Art Museum/MAR, the Rio Grande do Sul Art Museum/MARGS, the National Museum of the Republic, the Latin American Memorial, MAC-RS, Pivô Art and Research, Farol Santander, and the São Paulo Cultural Center. Her works are part of important collections such as the Rio Grande do Sul Art Museum/MARGS, Porto Alegre. MAC-RS, Porto Alegre. MAC-Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. Santander Brazil Collection, São Paulo. Rio Art Museum, Rio de Janeiro. Rio Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. Marcos Amaro Arts Foundation, Itu and the National Museum of the Republic, Brasília. São Paulo State Art Gallery, São Paulo.

Using a variety of languages, such as performance, video, photography, painting, objects and installations, her works address issues of gender, sexuality, identity, biopolitics, power relations and the system’s control of the body. Her interdisciplinary practice emerges from recreational movements that construct and destroy the androgynous image itself, which is the driving force behind the artist’s interest in investigating and questioning the socially imposed binary limits on what is established as masculine and feminine, madness and sanity, pornography and art. “He creates objects that allude to parts of the body, especially erogenous zones, recombined in unusual ways. Through a synthetic representation of these members, such as breasts, vaginas, anuses, etc., Bernardini develops a kind of formal lexicon of his own, in which supposed dildo-legs or dildo-arms, clitoral implants and orifice openings would be possible in various parts of the body, deconstructing the assumptions of a supposedly unique bodily materiality.” Critic and curator Beatriz Lemos wrote for the catalogue of the exhibition “Feminist Stories” in which the artist participated in 2019 at MASP.

For four years, Élle has been developing the series of photo-performances, “The Empress”, closing, and emptying the most important museums in the country just to receive her. She has already visited the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Mac-Niterói, the National Museum of the Republic, the Museum of Art of São Paulo, the Museum of Art of Rio Grande do Sul, the National Library, the Italian Embassy, ​​Farol Santander, and recently the Itamaraty Palace. She was also the first transgender artist to have a work incorporated into the collection of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, and the first to be collected in a museum in the country in 2015 with the video work, “The Artist’s Tears”, acquired for the collection of MARGS, in Porto Alegre. The artist is participating this year (2020) in the 12th Mercosul Biennial, at the invitation of curator Andrea Giunta, which opens in April in Porto Alegre.