Castelnuovo Fotografia Plural Landscapes, different trames, multiple genealogies

> Saturday 1st – Sunday 9th October
On show
The Shape of Self
Transgenderism in India, between Activism and Religion
Alessio Maximilian Schroder
curated by Chiara Capodici

> Sunday 9th October, 5 pm
Book presentation
The Shape of Self
di Alessio Maximilian Schroder
with Alessio Maximilian Schroder, Chiara Capodici and Daniela Bevilacqua, Indianist

Hindu mythology contains numerous examples of androgynes and individuals changing sexual orientation. This is an important cultural substratum that helps to understand both the presence of the hijras, a religious sub-caste that has represented different cross and trans gender identities in India for centuries, and the activism of many transgender communities.

From 2014 to 2018, Alessio Maximilian Schroder portrayed the complex trans community in several locations in West Bengal, a State from which many trans movements and leaders originate or are connected to. The people portrayed are part of the three macro-groups of the trans world: hijras, trans women, and trans men, filmed mostly in their private rooms.

The Shape of Self is a project that aims to portray the search for identity (the Self) of trans people, emphasizing how each body (the Shape) is the final or transient result of an introspective process that becomes externalized, while testifying to the social development that has been taking place since 2014 in the trans community.

Since 2019, he has then documented the Kinnara Akahara, a new religious order that brings hijras together now calling them Kinnara, established in 2016 by Laxmi Narayan Tripath, a transgender/hijra activist, with the goal of having their religious and social status recognized. In traditional Indian texts, Kinnaras are celestial beings associated with music: using this name instead of the traditional appellation of hijra is meant to emphasize their semi-divine (updevata) nature.
 
Laxmi was the first South Asian transgender representative at the United Nations and was one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court for the recognition of the Third Gender in India. In 2016 the Kinnara Akhara participated in the Kumbh Mela and the 2019 Ardh Kumbh Mela marked its affirmation in front of the orthodox ascetic (Akhara) groups.

The transgender community does not fully identify with hijras, who have been nevertheless a major driving force in asserting their rights since the first legal victory in 2005, when the Indian state added option E (eunuchs) to the traditional M and F on passport application forms.
In 2009, both hijras and transgenders were officially listed among “others” in the electoral rolls, and on April 15th 2014, thanks to the efforts of Laxmi and others, India’s Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling, officially recognized the Third Gender.