Transgressing Borders
A group of women on the rooftop of the LGBTQ+ shelter, El Jardín de Mariposas, in Tijuana, Mexico.Jan. 22, 2022. Photo courtesy Moreno-Luz
Xelestial Moreno-Luz reimagines southern border transcultural narratives
Xelestial Moreno-Luz is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist with a specialty in photography who embarked on a journey to the U.S-Mexico border to change the narrative of the transgender community in that region, focusing on Tijuana near California, and Juárez, just across from Texas. With her lens, she captured the experiences of members of the trans community of different ages and at key moments in their lives. Moreno-Luz said she wanted to go beyond the transformations and experiences we may think we know. She notes that while there are many trans people who are actively crossing the border and organizing to uplift caravans of transmigrants, there are also members of the trans community who are not migrating and going about their lives experiencing different types of changes. “Trans people are always transitioning, whether it be from a name to a pronoun, to a document, to hormones, to jaw lines, to breast augmentation. There's just so many ways that trans people are continuously transgressing their genders.”
As a U.S.-born artist and the daughter of immigrants from El Salvador with very different migration experiences, Moreno-Luz wanted to be sensitive to the experience of migrants. She says she stepped into the project with a lot of self-awareness about her own and her family’s journey. “Going into the borderlands and really talking to these communities also made me think of how privileged trans people in the U.S have (it), and so my project wanted to offer a space for trans folks to talk about their experiences with another trans person and in a way that isn't so focused on violence,” she adds. “Part of my methodology was really focusing on photography but also (a) photo voice and thinking about how to encapsulate people's narratives and people's stories through photography.”
‘I wanted us to be a space of collaborative learning and experiential learning.’
Moreno-Luz began studying photography 11 years ago and describes her relationship with the camera as one of healing. “Photography saved my life. I've been taking photos and working with cameras since I was in middle school. My first after-school digital club was with a queer woman who one day showed us obscure queer works and then two weeks later, wasn't our teacher no more,” Moreno-Luz says. One of the first queer teachers Moreno-Luz was exposed to at her school, who provided access to queer voices in art, was presumably let go for sharing that voice and experience. The sudden absence left an impression on Moreno-Luz as an artist. “So from a very young age, I saw the kind of stigmatization of queer and trans people within a media landscape and also how being queer and trans is like (being a) criminal.”
She titled this border project “Reimagining the border transcultural narratives” and stressed that she was very careful not to romanticize people’s experiences. “I wanted us to be a space of collaborative learning and experiential learning.”
From left , Adrik Reyes, Alexis García, and Sasha Tess pose in the green room of the Ignamar Bar in Juárez, Mexico. March 18, 2022. Photo courtesy Moreno-Luz.
Experience in Tijuana
Moreno-Luz was blown away by the 14 women who showed up at El Jardín de Las Mariposas, a community resource for members of the trans community, ready to have their picture taken. With help from her photo assistant and boyfriend, she produced lighting scenarios to create a beautiful experience for the women. “Some of these girls had also never experienced studio photography. Part of my process was really just, you know, having a conversation, taking some photos, asking a question, and then onto the next person. A lot of the girls are really beautiful people and a lot of them just wanna like be happy in their lives, you know?” The women shared what it meant for them to be in the community center where she photographed them. “ “Sisterhood is what keeps me in the present, and being able to be with other trans women gives me a purpose,” one woman said in Spanish.
For Moreno-Luz, these studio portraits in Tijuana transformed the border narrative because they showed a different side to the trans experience “ I just wanted to move beyond trauma, honestly. LGBTQ+ people are just so tired of being the victim. We're much more than victims. We're so much more than our victimhood,” she says.“We're survivors, and we're resilient, and we are applauded for our resiliency, but some of these girls just have normal basic dreams. They just want to live, and they want to exist without having to experience so much violence, you know? That is where I was coming from in my process, to not reproduce such notions of trauma; that is all it's known for at the border.”
Xelestial Moreno-Cruz. Photo courtesy Moreno-Cruz
Experience in Juárez
Moreno-Cruz used social media to identify spaces that are providing support to the trans community. She learned about Red de Solidaridad (solidarity network) Trans, a group based in Juárez that was able to connect her with people in the city. She was also able to speak with a transperson named Alexis, who works with trans youth supporting them to get their surgeries. Her experience in Juárez was vastly different from Tijuana. Part of her work included photographing a drag show from a trans perspective.
“When we think about drag work, we're just thinking about men impersonating female figures and female performance. But I think that drag as an art form is actually much more nuanced than that. In the context of Juárez and other parts of Latin America, ‘transvestismo’ or being like the ‘travestí’ is translated to English cross-dressing, but in this context, it's kind of used to talk about drag performance.” She notes that in drag performances, trans people were transgressing their gender even further through art form because it was trans women impersonating artists such as Paquita la del Barrio. For Moreno-Luz, the ability to capture these performances in photographs was powerful and a privilege.
What stood out to Moreno-Luz through this journey was the practice of creating spaces of belonging and how critical some spaces are for trans resources at the border, and how different experiences and communities within the trans community can be from one border city to another. She hopes that through these images, people can engage with the authenticity of members of the trans community and how they live and find ways to thrive beyond the United States border.
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Cora Cervantes-Orta was born in México and raised in Los Angeles. Growing up within a diverse community taught her to understand issues from different perspectives. She completed her undergraduate studies at Columbia University and her Master's degree in Multimedia Journalism at New York University. Her work has been published by NBC News Digital, Al-Jazeera, NPR's Latino USA, Salon, NAHJ: palabra and Narratively. She has produced stories for MSNBC and NBC News NOW. During her time at NBC Universal she has worked as Diversity Coordinator for NBC News and MSNBC, and as an Associate Producer for MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Al Sharpton. Currently, she is an Associate Coverage Producer for NBC News. Cora is passionate about equity in representation, in the media. She currently serves as Vice President of NAHJ’s Los Angeles Chapter. She resides in East Los Angeles, California.