AWERA
AWERA (“The path to becoming a woman” in Emberá Chami language) is a multidisciplinary project created with Las Traviesas—a community of trans-Indigenous women from the Embera Chami and Katio people in Santuario, Risaralda, Colombia—alongside other Indigenous peoples, artists, and collaborators from Latin America and Germany. AWERA reflects on how colonial constructions of identity can be queered and explores the possibilities of womanhood beyond cisgender categories. Through Awera, the participants shift the focus from white, western and urban gender identities to decolonial, non-western and rural concepts of queerness, in which the Emberá cosmovision, rituals, traditional heritage, and the local culture of the coffee region have a strong influence.
Developed between January 2021 and January 2024 in Santuario and Bogotá, AWERA emerged from collaborative laboratories, where diverse disciplines—including film, music, performance, beading, monotype printing, twerking, and photography—interacted in dialogue with one another. Works were created through shared experiences, drawing inspiration from ancestral futures, retellings of dreams, and imagination exercises, resulting in pieces that challenge and expand traditional narratives.
AWERA speaks to the power of unexpected collaborations and new, unpredictable kinships that transcend conventional genealogical, ethnocentric, and anthropocentric relationships. The interplay of the various works fosters an intimate dialogue across diverse backgrounds and imaginations, capturing the aspirations of Las Traviesas to demonstrate that there are many ways to be an Emberá woman.
CONTEXT
Following years of persecution from their communities, a group of Indigenous trans women from the Embera Chamí and Embera Katío people in Colombia have been working collectively to establish a new Indigenous trans community. They have found this new beginning in Santuario, Colombia, located in the heart of the country’s coffee region. Displaced from their respective communities because of their sexual orientation and gender identity, often times under the threat of violence, they wove their communities together under the name Traviesas and have since been inventing new forms of family, community organisation and administration.
Traviesas comes from the noun travieso (-a), meaning “across”, “oblique” or “cheeky”, “naughty”, which can also have a sexual connotation. It also refers to the minor coffee harvest, called 'traviesa' or 'mitaca', commonly carried out 6 months after the main harvest. In Santuario, Las Traviesas not only find work at the nearby coffee plantations but have also found each other support.
With approximately 70 members, Las Traviesas are working towards fulfilling the dream to have political recognition as an autonomous council (cabildo) by the Embera authorities and the Colombian government, and would therefore have the right to become a trans Indigenous reservation.