Through cultural allegories and non-conforming bodies, Guerreiro do Divino Amor reinterprets history and national identities, challenging Western cultural superiority with a queer and transnational perspective.
The Swiss Pavilion reflects the country’s interest in non-mainstream sexuality and art. Curator Andrea Bellini chose Brazilian-Swiss artist Guerrero do Divino Amor and his project Super Superior Civilizations, part of a larger saga. The two chapters that we see at Biennale explore politics viz. Architecture, they play with national identities by manipulating them into bizarre entities, investigate ‘non-conformist’ bodies, and mix Brazilian and European instances of queerness. In the first video installation, Switzerland is depicted as heaven on earth, a place where nature, technology, democracy, and capitalism blend together beautifully, held together by kitsch props. The second installation uses classical architecture and Roman civilization symbols, the expression of a supposedly superior political and cultural stance, as background for a show by Brazilian performer Ventura Profana. Profana, who is trans, shows her naked body, altered with prosthetics, to incarnate the light of Rome, the symbol of all Western civilization.