Brazilian artist and performer Aun Helden desires to tear down the constructs and constrictions around our bodies and begin again. Their work moves towards an understanding of gender and sex that’s free from cis-heteronormative patriarchal definitions. Un-gendering and un-sexing themself of their online artwork, they’re rebuilding themself fluidly with seeming full creative autonomy over their appearance. Inspired partly by their mother, and in lieu of a father figure, they’ve repoistioned themselves as a maternal figure presiding over their very own body. Fertile imagery abounds of their work; glossy black eggs, vulvic prosthetics, phallic facial appendages à la H.R. Geiger, and large, galactic, empty black eyes.

With the rise of the far-right and the election of president Bolsonaro in Brazil, the climate in Brazil for an artist like Aun Helden, whose work is so fundamentally at odds with conservative ideology, has turn into much more at stake. Here Aun Helden explains the inspiration behind their vision, much of which is rooted in childhood trauma and the terrifying absurdity of the political situation in Brazil. Despite how otherwordly Aun Helden might appear, that is art with a biopolitical agenda firmly rooted within the human condition that expresses the very real fears a number of young individuals are battling with in Brazil right away. 

Tell us in regards to the symbolism of eggs and penises in your work.
Aun Helden: I experienced sexual abuse and domestic violence in my childhood and pre-adolescence, so I had my first experiences with sex in essentially the most disturbing way. So for me, it’s totally essential now, with this potent body that I even have, to present myself the facility to castrate myself, castrate the male, castrate the binary. The facility just isn’t with the person that touched me once I was a toddler, but with me. The eggs, the prosthetic make-up, it is a contrasexual decontextualization, it is a prosthetic incorporation. It’s me twiddling with my body, displacing its origins and possibly replacing them.

You mentioned being a “hacker of the binary system.” Are you able to explain this further? What’s it about gender norms that you simply that you simply are fighting against?
Aun Helden: There are two forms of systems that hold our world: the male and the feminine. Those systems are prisons where all definitions, directions and narratives are already constructed, which implies people aren’t given the prospect to experience themselves in all of their possibilities. They live under their gender essentialisation. I’m giving people a latest approach to take into consideration their bodies and to destroy all of the attributions that we predict of after we see a body – we aren’t organic totalities. What I need is the crisis of the biopolitical system of production of subjectivities. For me there isn’t any solid format for a body with freedom, I don’t desire to go away one structure and go to a different broken structure.

For anyone who doesn’t know, could you explain a bit about what’s happening politically in Brazil, and what the recent election of Jair Bolsonaro means for the LGBTQ community?
Aun Helden: The president of Brazil is a LGBT-phobic, racist, sexist and anti-feminist person and as if that wasn’t enough, he’s also bringing a number of politicians with the identical ideas to the Brazilian government. Yesterday, the minister of Human Rights (emphasis on Human Rights) gave a speech saying that Brazil goes to have a latest era, where boys will only wear blue and girls pink, where the foundations will only be based on the Bible. Here in Brazil, we try to construct a movement to place gender education in schools, attempting to politicize children to not hate different sorts of expressions. It looks as if the one thing that Brazilian politicians take into consideration now’s destroying our try to make that occur, and to preserve the “traditional Brazilian family”. The election of Bolsonaro is giving strength to all conservatives in Brazil, making their hate speech stronger. It’s like Bolsonaro is giving them a knife to kill all of us. But realistically, there isn’t any higher president to represent what essentially the most Brazilians think, we’re already the country that kills essentially the most LGBT people on this planet, we’ve lived with all of this for a very long time, but are at all times waiting for change. We’re learning that change won’t ever come from them, so we have now to turn into strong with ourselves.

Brazil is thought for its body ideals and surgery, which will likely be used to reinforce curves e.g. the “Brazilian Butt Lift”. What do you’re thinking that of Brazil’s culture of surgery?
Aun Helden: Yes and Brazil is the country that has essentially the most cosmetic surgery on young people on this planet. I’m not totally against cosmetic surgery, but fascinated about why people do it’s what worries me. I modify my image too, on a regular basis, it’s almost like a surgery for me, but I do know my reasons and the purpose where I need to go along with all of it.

Your work seems to directly oppose this traditional culture of surgery  – was that a conscious decision?
Aun Helden: I believe all that I do may be very conscious. I’m not a crazy person, I even have zero craziness in my art, all of my work may be very well thought out and I do know exactly where I need to go.

What are you working on next? What do you hope to realize in the long run?
Aun Helden: I do know that any day the sky can fall from above me. I have the desire to make my art more functional and precise each day. My goal is to conceive my art as a trigger: a trigger which ignites the potential of those that are fighting alongside me and a trigger pointing at those that wish to see our end.

What are your thoughts on social media? How was it shaped or facilitated your work?
Aun Helden: I’m continually attacked by hate messages on social media: last month certainly one of my videos went viral on Facebook and was shared in Bolsonaro groups, so I received a whole bunch of messages saying I should kill myself or that I must have been aborted. But otherwise, it’s where I can create a network with individuals who wouldn’t have a number of the privileges that I even have, like living in an enormous city where I can connect with people who find themselves in the identical fight as me and to find a way to go to zones, even temporary ones (just like the parties here in São Paulo which is my most important job), of “safety”.

What’s the long run of beauty?
Aun Helden: We just should destroy the chains from our faces, legs, arms, chest, body and liberate every thing that’s being locked up. The one thing that I’m sure is that the long run of beauty will include the tip of heterosocial norms of being and of manufacturing beauty.