Quetzal Maucci
Lens-based Artist & Educator
Based in London, UK
Open for commissions, teaching, exhibitions, and collaborations.
Lens-based Artist & Educator
Based in London, UK
Open for commissions, teaching, exhibitions, and collaborations.
Years: 2018-present
There is an image of family that society has built up that for many years did not include my family. An image of a family that was built on a man and a woman and a white picket fence in a version of the United States that was not my reality. I am the daughter of two migrant and queer women from Peru and Argentina: Flavia and Lucrecia. Or as I called them: Mami y Mamú. For so long, I struggled from the internalised stigma that grows out of society’s idea of what the perfect family should be—of a family that I’ve found does not exist and perhaps never did. My family is not heteronormative or conventional. Still, we are a family. A family that is steeped in stories, challenges, joy, and differences. A family whose relationships transform over time. A family that keeps giving.
During the 1990s, in the era of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the “Defense of Marriage Act,” the systems and constructs that were in place did not represent or support family structures like ours. We were amongst very few families who resembled ours and it was new terrain for my mothers. And while they loved each other, those pressures affected us as a family. My parents’ sexuality and their gender had little to do with who I became. It was their knowledge, their personalities, their ways of being, and the community they gave me that mattered so much more.
In the early 1980s, Flavia and Lucrecia met while working at The Women’s Building in San Francisco. Both my mothers remember the day they met and the strength of their first initial attraction to one another. They bonded over their love for their respective countries and also the fears and concerns with the oppression that occurred across South America under the military juntas. They also shared solidarity for political movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador. It was a relationship rooted in activism, respect, debates, dancing, and rallying for rights of women, migrants, and LGBTQ+ communities.
In 1992, after knowing each other for more than 10 years, they decided to raise me together. They were fierce, stubborn mothers. Mujeres formadas de la luna y la oscuridad y todas las estrellas más brillantes. They challenged me to question what I saw, what I observed, what I needed, what I thought. Yet, while they created a home wherever they could, I hid my mothers away. While they took care of me, I lied about who was who. I hid my mothers away because society taught me to hide them away. Now, I am telling our story.
Acknowledgments & Recognition