Body in Search of Freedom / Wynnie Mynerva

Interview with Wynnie Mynerva

In this moving interview, Latin American artist Wynnie Mynerva reflects on her childhood and the origins of her personal and creative processes. The conversation becomes a space where reality, sexuality, expression, and freedom intertwine, revealing how her work not only articulates an individual voice but also embodies the experiences and aspirations of those who challenge norms and seek other ways of existing. Her pieces, charged with emotional intensity, emerge as spaces where resistance and transformation converge in a political act.

Your childhood in Peru was shaped by diverse social and cultural realities. In what ways did the experiences you witnessed during those years shape the foundation of the themes you explore in your work today?

I grew up in Villa El Salvador, on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. Coming from districts marked by violence, inequality, and economic instability generates different kinds of fear. I grew up with fear from a very young age, and through art, what I try to understand is how to work with and confront that fear in order to gain freedom. A somewhat illusory freedom, because it’s not a freedom you can truly live within your own country.For example, one of my first goals was to feel comfortable with my own body, with the fact of having been born a woman. Although this can be achieved through art, I believe it’s not always something you can apply to your immediate surroundings, you can’t go out dressed how you want, you can’t inhabit your body freely. I feel that within art, as a projection, I sought that, to fight my fears. Living in the place where I was born made me rethink all of this. From a young age, I began to understand where violence came from and who were the most affected. I started developing strategies to survive. All of these elements made me want to understand how reality works and find tools to escape it, or at least to cope with what was happening.

In previous interviews, you’ve mentioned that you see art as a space for research. Could you elaborate on that idea? What kind of research are you conducting through your work, and what is the question or intuition that guides you in that process?

I always start from a personal experience, out of fear of speaking for others, of taking on stories that don’t belong to me or that I haven’t lived. From the beginning, my work has followed a clear line that sees art as a form of therapy. A problem or a conflicting thought arises, a painful experience or memory, and I begin by writing about that conflict. Then I move on to visualizing it, representing it through paintings, and through a piece or a project, I try to “process” it. Not necessarily to find a solution, but to create tools or weapons that allow me to generate new reflections.For example, a few years ago I discovered that I am HIV positive. In understanding my condition, I realized that if I limited myself to looking up medical references or information online, I would only find pre-established structures, such as the exclusively medical view of the HIV+ body, focused on disease and cure. That body is no longer seen as erotic or desiring. So what I try to do is dismantle that narrative and create new positions from which to look at these bodies, to think of HIV as identity, as a creative space, as a body of the future. So, every time a conflict arises within me, I write about it, transform it into images, into paintings, into series, and then develop a strategy to rethink that conflict, to overcome fear and push it into a creative space. That’s where my projects are born.

“I feel that within art, as a projection, I sought that, to fight my fears.”

You describe your pieces as both pictorial and performative. How do these two dimensions interact in your creative process?

In the case of painting, it functions almost as a literal representation of theory; it’s like writing, narrating my own research through images. But performance, unlike painting, is carried out in reality, and that’s what drew me to it. Painting, in the end, is an image, a representation of something. And I believe that in that process, many symbols and meanings are lost. For me, it was important that it wasn’t just about representing an image, but that in some way, the representation could have a direct impact on reality. In the place where I grew up, there were no art spaces like cultural centers or contemporary art museums, there were no contemporary art exhibitions. I encountered that world much later, and I became interested in bringing all the knowledge I had gained through painting into a more direct space of dialogue: performance. Performance is the act of working with your body, that is the raw material. It’s a form of immediate conversation. We all have a body, whereas painting, I feel, is surrounded by different meanings, more tied to the long history of art, and on the other hand, to spaces where works hold economic value, like the market, museums, or galleries. For me, the theory that can be contained in a painting is activated through performance in the body. It’s like bringing theory into practice.

An essential part of your work seeks to break away from the normative truths of sex and gender. How do you experience that subversive gesture within an art system that often still operates under binary and conservative structures?

I believe we are always exposed to criticism, often even mocking criticism. When we lack the tools to understand certain positions or ideas, we tend to attack them, and that’s why I feel I’ve always been exposed to those kinds of comments and reactions. Any kind of change, whether small or large, generates discomfort. People are usually very comfortable where they are, so any comment or action that pulls them out of that space creates a kind of emotional “earthquake.” In the end, you’re interacting with people, and each person has their own emotions, story, or perspective. I remember, for example, that in one of my first exhibitions (*The Other Sex*, 2018), I presented molds of sexual organs. That cultural space also offered workshops for children, and some parents wanted to break the molds and remove them from the exhibition because they were worried their kids would see them. So, I think you have to let things happen. In that case, let the parents react as they need to. We’re constantly interacting with multiple sensitivities, and for me, it’s a matter of “letting go and receiving.” You can’t control what’s going to happen, you can only be consistent in your own practice. We can’t predict how the audience will respond.

In your artistic practice, your physical body has become raw material and a conceptual tool. At what point did you decide to use it directly as a medium of creation? For example, in the surgical intervention where you removed your “Adam’s rib,” what led you to make that decision? What meanings or inspirations motivated such a radical and symbolic gesture?

In general, all my work is born from a need to find my own freedom. This search is directly linked to the experiences of fear and anxiety I lived through in my childhood, when I began to understand how society functions, how we are kept trapped through fear. That’s why my work seeks to capture small fragments of freedom, especially when I’m able to modify my body and that small chimera becomes reality. Modifying my body goes beyond the symbolic; it transforms deep aspects of my life on a mental and physical level. There’s one particular story that gave birth to this project: One time, while reading tarot with a friend, the Lilith card appeared. She told me, “You really resemble Lilith.” Lilith was the first woman, before Eve, and according to the myth, she was condemned to have a burning vagina and to be unable to bear children. That image sparked great curiosity in me, who could have imagined something like that? I began researching the historical meaning of her figure and found an archetype of a woman punished for her rebellion and desire for freedom. In Latin America, the symbolic weight of religion still operates as a dominant cultural accessory. The figures of Adam and Eve are almost presented as the founding “superheroes” of our story. Even though I don’t believe in God, I recognize how present those images still are. I mention this because, for example, in Peru, when referring to a man’s partner, people often say “his rib”, slang that directly references the biblical myth of Eve being created from Adam. That’s where the idea was born: if Lilith was condemned for rebelling against God and seeking her freedom, how can I narrate another genesis? One where the first two women in history, Lilith and Eve, meet, form an alliance, and free themselves together from Adam. That’s how I created a large-format painting where the two meet, and through their encounter, a new creation is born. As a symbol of this alliance, I imagined a scene where Lilith removes one of her ribs and offers it to Eve, reversing the biblical narrative. And then I decided to take that narrative into the physical realm, to obtain a real rib as archaeological evidence of this new story. That’s why I chose to undergo surgery to have one of my ribs removed. Although this procedure is often done for aesthetic purposes, to reduce the waist, in my case, it was a political act: transforming a medical procedure into a performative action against religious dogma. Removing that “imposed faith” from the body, but also reclaiming my autonomy as a woman.

“Performance is the act of working with your body, that is the raw material.”

One of your most provocative and powerful pieces is undoubtedly the video in which you document the surgical intervention to close your vagina. This deeply symbolic gesture transcends the body to become a political statement. What did you feel when you made that decision? Was it an act of rupture, liberation, mourning or a mix of all those things?

In various projects, I always tried to connect with my femininity and with the fact of having been born a woman. Since I was a child, being a woman felt like a kind of bad luck. I saw that men in the streets were not attacked the way women were. During my adolescence, reconciling with the idea of being a woman was very difficult for me, so I began working on projects related to sexual organs, trying to better understand the genitals. Later on, I developed a project about dildos, thinking that maybe if the answer wasn’t in the physical body, it could emerge through sexual prosthetics. My own pleasure, my sexual and vaginal relief, was a promise that remained in process. After the fourth exhibition linked to this research, I realized that the process was shifting. The idea of physically identifying as a woman, and especially of having pleasurable vaginal sex, was becoming increasingly irreconcilable. I felt, more strongly each time, that when I had vaginal sex, the sensation was very close to that of abuse. I almost gave up. Until I decided to be practical. I thought: “If I don’t want to have vaginal sex, then I can surgically close my vagina.” It wasn’t a new type of surgery; in fact, it’s an intervention sometimes performed on women after childbirth. In my case, the difference was that much more than usual was sutured, three-quarters of the vaginal opening were closed. After the surgery, I felt relief. The relief of finally no longer having to explain where and how I wanted to have sex. I became practically “unavailable” for vaginal sex, and over time, I began to feel what I had been searching for, I started to enjoy my body much more, to see myself as physically feminine with greater freedom and acceptance. I was able to reconcile with many parts of my femininity. Modifying one part of our body transforms others. And that, for me, was profoundly gratifying.

As a young Latin American woman with such a disruptive artistic language, how easy or difficult has it been for you to carve out a path in the contemporary art world? Have you faced any specific forms of resistance or barriers? And now that your career is gaining momentum, how do you navigate that visibility within a system that often still excludes or exoticizes what comes from the Global South?

What has impacted me the most in my career is being born into a context of precarity. The art world is elitist, and that made access to opportunities much more difficult. In terms of being a woman or having radical ideas, I’ve been able to find a path. But growing up in a poor family, where we often had just enough to eat, made it very hard to imagine dedicating myself to art. From a very young age, I knew it would be difficult to generate income to support my family. I also studied in a public school, and in Peru, these institutions usually have very limited access to arts education. Leaving the country as a migrant has also been a complex process, you don’t have support networks. Still, I believe I have a strong survival instinct. The place where I grew up taught me to be resourceful, to read situations, to know how and where to move. That’s why I adapt easily and, in fact, I’m drawn to spaces where I don’t feel comfortable. I’ve never lived in comfortable environments, and maybe that’s why I have the ability to adapt to different contexts.

If you could distill your work, with all its bodily, symbolic, and political weight, into one essential message for the world, what would it be? What truth, question, or provocation would you want those who encounter your work to be unable to ignore after having met you?

To rethink life, to question the idea of settling for the version of life that’s already given, the one most people follow: getting married, having children, buying a house, getting a good job, being born with a body and simply sticking with it, that’s something I always keep in mind. I feel that reimagining life, even in the most intimate and smallest spaces, is one of the most valuable things a person can do. Life is short, it’s fleeting, and the body is a vast space for research and creativity. Through the church, we’ve been taught that we are born with a “pure” body, one that should not be modified. But through art, one can choose to go beyond that, to think of every act as a political act. Everyday life is full of political actions, and every change we make feeds and inspires a social fabric. That’s what I would like people to see in my work, to see someone who didn’t just think about freedom, but who, in certain moments, dared to exercise it.

What projects are you currently developing, and what territories, whether physical, symbolic, or institutional, would you like your work to reach in the coming years?

I would like to develop actions in public spaces, to intervene in places like plazas, whether through sculptures or performances. However, I know it’s a challenge, because you never know how people will respond. I think it’s important to carefully consider the place and the timing, and to ask in which contexts an action truly makes sense. For example, in Barcelona, many spaces end up being consumed almost exclusively by tourists, which for me would take away the value or depth of the artistic gesture.

Body in Search of Freedom / Wynnie Mynerva

Credits:

Artist: Wynnie Mynervaa / @wynniemynervaa
Interview: Sofia Moreno / @sofiamorenopin
Editor: Maria Abramenko  / @mariabramenko
Junior Editor: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci

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