Salon de Montrouge 2022

Brandon Gercara was born in 1996. They live and work in La Réunion. They graduated from the École supérieure d’art de La Réunion.

First of all, it seems necessary to formulate the feminist exercise of Brandon’s position in order to understand their intentions, commitments and the stakes of their artistic approach. Brandon Gercara is a non-binary person, zoreole¹ (a zorey mom and a creole dad). They live and work in La Réunion where they have been active, since their studies at the art school in the city of Le Port, in a militant artistic reflection focused on feminist, decolonial and LGBTQIA+ struggles. This is mainly translated into performative actions, such as, for example, the project PD pour demain in which the artist incarnates a political figure in campaign. Brandon Gercara adopts all the codes and political strategies to convince the voters to vote for them. The idea was already to publicly declaim elements of resistance, to discuss subjects that were still very discreet in Reunion Island. Gradually, the project has evolved and now bears a generic name: REqueer. It is a platform for collective thoughts, a militant and artistic association at the heart of the Reunionese society. REqueer (RE for La Réunion) proposes actions established from a situated and collective queer thought: performances, walks, educational workshops, roundtables, dances (notably voguing with Luna Ninja, among others), music, conferences, exhibitions or even the opening of a LGBTQIA+ resource space.

Resources, models of identification and accessibility to this information are placed at the heart of REqueer. Brandon Gercara activates performances on stage where they transmit feminist speeches by Françoise Vergès, Asma Lamrabet and Elsa Dorlin through lip sync. With Lip Sync de la pensée [Lip sync of thought] (a performance in progress), the artist models the attitudes and clothing of the people they mimic. Performance and drag aesthetics serve an approach in which artistic activism is thought out for all. In the same impetus, on May 16, 2021, the actors and actresses of the association REqueer organised the first pride parade in La Réunion. This historic parade, led essentially by artists, brought together several hundred people, as did the second march that took place this year. At the same time, they have been developing a series of portraits of queer people in La Réunion with Ugo Woatzi (an artist based in Brussels). Majik Kwir (2021) reveals a timeless mythology where queer bodies are part of an imaginary and collective history. Brandon Gercara, in alliance with their accomplices, injects their artistic reflection in the heart of society to deconstruct the sclerosing binarity, dominant models, oppressions and assignments. It is then a question of carrying a collective strategy of the joy to transform this violence into a both emancipating and vital force.