Tarot Trans
The Chilean artist appropriates the major Arcana of this divinatory art and displays bodies that are often hidden.
El tarot como herramienta política.
Kitsch, camp, the South American aesthetic tradition and pop come together with the ancient tarot as a form of social analysis.
In the exhibition “The Final Judgment: Tarot Trans,” Zaida González Ríos breaks with conventional norms and advocates for inclusivity. The Chilean artist appropriates the twenty-two major Arcana of this divinatory art and displays bodies that are often hidden. She portrays elderly individuals, homosexuals, transgender, crossdressers, migrants, and individuals with disabilities who are invisibilized and discriminated against in society. Under her lens, these models embody new symbols. The Magician becomes a woman, and the Hanged Man is naked. The High Priestess is fat, the Lover is tempted by two men, the Judgment carries crutches, and Death wears a pink sequined skirt. Hand-colored from black and white photographs, these cards promise an extraordinary destiny.
González possesses a completely unique language; her work is constructed from a rich imaginary, indebted to her most intimate obsessions and interests and to Latin American popular visuality in general and Chilean in particular. Her easily recognizable aesthetic conceals a complex background of quotes and a backdrop of social and political criticism that often appears starkly under an irony or evocative colors from an apparently childlike universe.
