The Trans Memory Archive (TMA) collective is an archivist-activist-artistic collective comprised of 8 trans and travesti activists (4 of whom will participate in this event). The archive itself contains over 15,000 vernacular photographs and images taken by trans women of their communities as well as personal objects dating from the 1940s to the present.
Work from the TMA has been installed in some of the most prestigious museums in the world including the Tate Museum (London), the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano en Buenos Aires (Argentina), as well as spaces such as the Instituto Moreira Salles (Brazil), La Virreina Centre de la Imatge (Barcelona), and the Centro Cultural Kirchner (Argentina). The Archive has been recognized by major foundations and photography/arts publications such as the Aperture Foundation, Paris Photo, Rolling Stone, and Balám magazine, among others.
“Archiving Trans Memory in the Américas,” will be a conversation on trans and travesti archival praxis, curation and installation as well as history and memory-making practices in the Américas with particular focus on the Trans Memory Archive project and post-dictatorship Argentina. This event is explicitly grounded in and aims to circulate trans, travesti, and trans of color marginalized knowledges and knowledge-making practices, visual archives, cultural production, histories, and subjectivities.