In 2021, amidst the seemingly end of the Pandemic I started working on my first solo exhibition. Following is the exhibition text written by the journalist Milly Burroughs on my work and our chat together.
"In the anonymity of exchange with an internet stranger, we can find a desirable duality of intimacy through exposure and the fearlessness of disguise. Perhaps we reach out because our truth is bursting through our skin. Perhaps we reach out because we see a vessel for a soul in a space safer than our own now. Whether in spirit or in flesh, once connected by emotion, we are together, in the end.
Leo is intersex, and fighting a battle to preserve his unique identity. Angelica Liv’s acrylic on canvas work—shown for the first time at AKA Berlin—is the culmination of the Colombian artist’s first stage of her own gender exploration, inspired largely by a candid series of autobiographical emails from Leo, as well as the exploration of her own feelings of sexual fluidity and experience of mental health stigma. In her debut solo exhibition Together, in the end, she allows us to witness what Leo’s overtly personal, direct and revelatory outreach allowed her to be. The artist, sprouting from the roots of her illustrative style and blooming into larger scale painted work, portrays an imagined place where “we” can mean whatever we want it to. Liv presents us with an opportunity to acknowledge and observe a life free of the chains of gender binary, while inviting us to be her accomplices in conquering a profound desire for togetherness.
“I am Leonardo, I am 30 years old, and for five years, an ‘anomaly’ has been detected, I am a person with intersex :) in appearance and genitally they see me as a male, and in fact, I am normally, but within me, I have also active female organs, uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and a vaginal canal about 3 cm but I have it .. and likewise, I also menstruate, I have hormonal attacks and everything that gives us month after month .. and yes... It's hard and hard to believe, why? because even today in the middle of 2021 we are a bit unknown to society.”
Amidst uncertain times, a new way of seeing ourselves and others has flourished. Leo saw Liv as the path he would choose to come out to the world as Intersex. “My Unique Story” is what he titled his first email, which he wrote to the artist as a total stranger. Unique became the language they both developed as they started to play and tell each other secret stories about how they were just not what people thought they were. An instant connection was built. Reflections about how Leo’s body, holding two completely functioning sexes, can assist us in imagining a community not based on a gender binary—visualising community as a body that holds us simultaneously. As a result, the work shown in Liv’s debut solo exhibition hopes to provoke the voyeur to open their minds to less binary definitions of identity and more creative ways of perceiving themselves and others.
In life beyond Together, in the end, Leo will continue to fight to have his uniqueness accepted, and Liv will stay close to her practice as a way to connect with the outer world."
Poetry and archival Zine
Acrylic on canvas. 2m x 2m