“Cuerpo final: el máximo lienzo” [Final Body: The Ultimate Canvas], an article written by Santiago Echeverry, appeared in the second edition of Clave 019–17, the magazine published by Multimedia Creation Major in the art department at the Universidad de los Andes at Bogotá during the 2009 semester. In his article, Echeverry discusses in great detail the use of the body as a support in visual and performance art, and attributes great importance to the work of Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaist and Surrealist artists of the early twentieth century. In Echeverry’s opinion, these works marked a turning point in the history of art because they introduced the subject of gender and political activism aimed at social inclusion based on the transformation of the figure of the shaman, who was allowed to mutate—during his “ritual performances”—into animals, human beings, or spirits, of any gender. Echeverry lists a number of artists, drag queens, actors, and performers that have addressed the gender issue by using their own bodies as their support from 1970 until the present day. As a result, in these cases the differentiation between the work and the artist gets increasingly blurred until the process morphs into a critical exercise, an attempt to understand a person’s life as a formal, conceptual image of a work of art. These characteristics allow Echeverry to establish the group identified as permanent “shamans,” who embody the fear of the world, accepting political positions that have confronted questions of gender identity, sexuality, and functionality for the past century.    

This is an important article because it adds to the research and historical inquiry that has been conducted in connection with the Colombian artist Santiago Echeverry (b. 1970) and his use of the body as a medium and an (uncompromising) performance support in the field of visual arts that deal with the subject of gender. The article refers to the impossibility of separating the work from the artist, because one is a construct that embodies the other. The article is also an important historical “queer” acknowledgment for a Spanish-speaking audience. It identifies people, works, films, and visual artists, who since long before the dawn of the twentieth century, defied the gender barriers and moral standards imposed by the hegemonic policies of the people in power. It is interesting to note the particular cases that Echeverry highlights within contemporary visual art circles: the French artist Orlan (b. 1947), who underwent plastic surgery to alter her body as a medium for her work; and the Canadian performance artist Kent Monkman (b. 1965) who subverts the roles of colonizer and colonized by cross-dressing characters shown in nineteenth-century Canadian landscapes and colonial paintings.    

This article is important because it establishes the basis and historical context for the production of Echeverry’s works, such as the video-performance piece Lover Man, where can you be? (2000), which is presented as part of the activist congregation “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” Colombia section. The artist has produced a diptych that shows a video of himself cross-dressed as Patty E. Patétik while his male image sings Lover Man, where can you be? with the American singer Billie Holiday. Or the video Manifiesto Pattytétiko (2006), which is an interview-manifesto with Patty E. Patétik—the artist’s alter ego—in which he describes the sociopolitical environment in which the character was born. It should be noted that although the article makes no reference to Colombia, ever since the 1970s, Colombian artists such as Luis Caballero Holguín (1943−95) and Miguel Ángel Rojas (b. 1946) have worked with gender related subjects and paved the way for other local artists, who in recent years, have approached their art as a form of activism designed to make our sociopolitical system more open to sexual minorities. This group includes Fernando Arias (b. 1962) [see doc. no. 1131272] and Juan Pablo Echeverri (b. 1974) [doc. no. 1134598], among many others. 

Santiago Echeverry is a Colombian artist; he is a graduate of the visual arts program at the Universidad de los Andes, and earned his master’s degree in Professional Studies: Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University (NYU). He is currently (in 2010) an associate professor and coordinator of electronic media art and technology at the University of Tampa, Florida.