Diversa, Arte e Cultura

Diversa, Arte e Cultura - Sociocultural Organization - was created on December 13, 2012 by and for the LGBTI+ community, primarily to preserve the community's memory through collective and participatory processes.

Its main objective is to protect the material and immaterial heritage of sexual diversity, such as personal, institutional and movement collections that cross and make up the trajectory of the community in Brazil. Managed by LGBTI+ people, under its care lasts one of the largest collections of art made by the LGBTI+ community in Brazil, consisting of more than 6,000 physical items and approximately 60,000 digital items. This collection is made up of different typologies and houses several pieces by protagonists such as the artist, writer and singer, Cláudia Wonder; photographer Pedro Stephan; from the editor Laura Bacellar; and organizations of great relevance such as the São Paulo GLBT Pride Parade Association, among others.

Diversa also aims to make visible and insert, in the broad context of culture, the practices, creations and experiences developed from the “QUEER” universe, seeking to contribute to the process of sensitizing society in relation to the specificities of people with sexual orientations, identities and gender expressions that are dissidents from the majority.

Another focus of action is to ensure access to and enjoyment of the cultural production of the LGBTI+ community, to promote respect for diversity and a culture of peace. Our organization is based on three guiding axes: activism, education and culture, as a strategy to achieve its main objective, which is to collaborate with the inclusion and citizenship of the LGBTI+ population.

Diversa, Arte e Cultura participated in the creation of the Museum of Sexual Diversity (MDS), the first space in Latin America on the subject. Thus, Diversa and MDS exists simultaneously and naturally, as a result of their common objectives, establishing a fruitful relationship in the construction of a set of joint actions and activities in line with their missions.

In June 2015, the joint campaign with the MDS and Metro (São Paulo subway company) “Voices against homophobia”, exposed posters with photos of entertainment celebrities in more than 10 stations of the São Paulo subway. The photographs featured artists completing the phrase “Homophobia is…” to celebrate International LGBTI+ Pride Day. The campaign had great repercussion in the media, giving visibility to discussions about discrimination and violence against the LGBTI+ population.

Another joint action with the MDS was "Mostra Diversa", created with the aim of giving space and visibility to LGBT+ artists and/or works that addressed the issue of dissident sexualities, selected through a public notice. In partnership with MDS since 2015, the show has already presented 3 editions (2015, 2017 and 2019). In 2021, due to the COVID pandemic, its execution was not possible.

LGBTIphobia

People with sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions that disagree with the majority of the population have been systematically, throughout history, marginalized and excluded from social life. From sinners to the sick, from there to criminals, it was necessary to hide and silence their voices, so that they would not suffer violence that could result in their death, the fate of many. In Brazil, the story was no different and today, according to the Report of the Gay Group of Bahia (GGB), this is the country that kills the most LGBTI+ in the world. In 2019, every 26 hours, a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person died from a hate crime in our country.

Violent events against LGBTs are routine in Brazil. Since the internment in asylums in the last century, systematic persecutions, such as "Operation Tarantula", in the 1980s, until cases such as Luana Barbosa dos Reis, 34, mother, black, poor and lesbian, who died after being brutally attacked by at least six police officers on the street where she lived, in Ribeirão Preto (SP), or the teenager Itaberlly Lozano, murdered by own mother. Also, in 2017, Dandara dos Santos, a transgender woman, was cowardly tortured and killed in Fortaleza (CE), and the publication of the video of the violence on social media caused outrage and commotion. More recently, 13-year-old Keron Ravach was beaten to death in Ceará, becoming the youngest victim in history, according to monitoring carried for the past 4 years by Antra, an Association of Trans Women and Transvestites in Brazil. These are just a few examples of the cruel reality of LGBTphobic violence in Brazil.

This discrimination and violence results from the attempt to impose norms, rules and dogmas considered "normal", institutionalized through the promotion of religion and conservative sectors of society, in relation to behaviors, expressions and sexual practices considered "inadequate", since there are people who do not agree with these squares and, in order to survive, end up repressing their sexualities and affections. For those for whom this alternative is not viable, the increase in levels of violence is staggering. Heteronormativity and compulsory cisgenderism, and their consequent discrimination against the LGBTI+ population, also trigger exclusionary processes that result in the invisibility of their memory, history, cultural and sociopolitical production. This logic needs to be stopped, urgently. So, in summary, our main areas of activity are:

Preserve the memory of the LGBTI+ population
Stimulate, promote and include LGBTI+ artists and their cultural production
Promote the culture of peace and human rights education, especially to combat violence and discrimination against LGBTI+ people.