Fantasmas en el Espacio Urbano– Barcelona (Ghosts in the Urban Space – Barcelona)

Lesbian identity was virtually invisible in the Westernised world for a long time, ‘the lesbian as an identity would therefore be defined precisely by the absence of spatial location’, outside the field of the visible, like the ‘blind spot’ of a rear-view mirror, ‘a ghost’ in the city.

How does the lesbian body (self-)represent itself in urban space when it finally abandons its ‘phantasmal’ state?

What counter-narratives of the recent past can emerge when we reveal these representations?

This research is based on the first (self-)representations of visible lesbians in Barcelona’s urban space, between Spain’s transition to democracy and the end of the 1990s, seeking dialogues with this recent past and trying out forms of reparation.

Catarina Botelho

I am a visual artist and researcher interested in the relationships between spaces, places and architectures in urban space and their uses and experiences that challenge productivist logics. I have been developing projects in recent years and examining the relationship between the lesbian body and urban space in the Iberian Peninsula.

I have exhibited in places such as: Museu de Arte, Arquitectura e Tecnologia, Lisbon (2021); Fundación Foto Colectania, Barcelona (2020); Sesc Pinheiros, São Paulo (2015); Villa Iris, Fundación Botín, Santander (2014); Elba Benítez en Kvadrat, Madrid (2012); Centre de Cultura Sa Nostra, Palma de Mallorca (2009); Casa de Serralves – Fundação de Serralves, Porto (2007), and La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2005). I have received grants in recent years from the Fundación ”la Caixa” (2018), Fundación Gulbenkian (2018), Barcelona City Council (2021) and Government of Catalonia (2022).

I have a Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Lisbon’s FBA; I did the Independent Studies Programme (PEI) at MACBA in 2018, and I completed the MUECA – Master in Cultural Studies and Visual Arts (Feminist and Queer Perspectives) at Miguel Hernández University in 2022.