Among the branches of a luxuriant green tree, bodily figures appear. These are adorned men in bodysuits whose pattern matches the tree, enabling the figure to camouflage into the atmosphere, where only a glistening silhouette is visible. The film Gomero by Osías Yanov (b. 1980, Buenos Aires) looks like a tableau vivant, the scene’s quiet and bright setting being an extravagantly green and lush rubber tree, typically found in tropical climates. The models are a group of cross-dressers and another figure – dressed in Yanov’s recurring motif of a tightly fitting head-to-toe bodysuit – who sit serious and cool on different branches of the tree. The group is perfectly still, only a soft movement flickers from the leaves.
The work brings together various of Yanov’s interests, from visibility and invisibility of queer identity and culture to contemporary ways of reconfiguring it. His work transits between sculpture, performance, film, and dance, represented by multiple forms, gestures, and symbols. They question gender identity, the reconfiguration and transformation of bodies into their surroundings, and the individual as a catalyst for change. His practice is informed by layers of references, from modernist aesthetics to ethnographic artifacts. He tries to connect ancient ritual practices with current identity construction and the ways in which societies determine values and archetypes of gender and sexuality.
The performative quality of bodies is something that much interests Yanov. Such as in his presentation in the atrium of the MALBA museum in Buenos Aires, where ten male performers dressed in purple chromatic bodysuits interacted with thinly geometric metallic sculptures. Some of the suits had specific holes in them: a small circle exposes a butt cheek, a straight cutoff reveals some fingertips, or another split uncovers a set of nipples. Besides these slivers of flesh, everything else was covered, including the face. It almost anonymized the gender of the performer, yet the tightness of the suit still suggested a protruding sexuality. This was the setting for Yanov’s performance VI Sesión en el Parlamento (2015). In the work, he imagines the possibility of enacting a series of movements that would establish a law in parliament. How would a parliament made of choreographed bodies look like? The bodies communicate with the sculptures and create a rhythmic and quasi-erotic relationship to them. JV
self-presentation:
The robotic arms. The prosthesis. The copy left. El delta del Tigre. Metals in their raw states. The caverns. The camps. The trained birds. The Hadron Collider. The testosterone gel. The Cerrito Mix disco in Buenos Aires, La Escuelita disco in New York. The iron in the body. The masks. The kisses. The drag queens inspired by drag queens.