siempre fui el

After completing his body of work, antes muerta que sencilla, de la Torre could not avoid the discomfort he felt after dressing in their mother's hyper-feminine style. Envious of his collaborator, who got to perform as the father figure in the project, de la Torre began to imagine a new possibility for his practice.

Siempre fui el began with a series of polaroids in which De la Torre cut his hair and recreated his father's characteristic mustache. The photographer William Camargo, one of de la Torre’s close friends, traveled with de la Torre for his site-specific performance, “Self Portrait: Portrait of My Father, Atenogenes de la Torre,” to photograph and document de la Torre as he performed and replicated a photo of his father as a young man in Chicago in the ‘70s.  

Camargo also took intimate portraits of de la Torre for his vulnerable and intimate series, “Week After Post-Op,” taken after de la Torre had gender-affirming surgery. The book will also feature a grid of 280 portraits for a performance entitled “Untitled (Vaquero Performance). De la Torre’s relief prints, “Three Months Post Top Surgery and The Night Before Top Surgery,” bookend the project. In the prints, De la Torre uses his own chest as a print, rolling black ink on his body, and pushing the weight of his body onto paper.

Each series in siempre fui el gave De la Torre the ability to explore his own transmasculine identity while creating work that engages with the ghost of his father’s masculinity and the influence his patriarchal presence has on the family order. 

This part of the work is in conversation with the work of the artist Carlee Fernandez Self Portrait: Portrait of my Father, Manuel Fernandez (2006), and Ana Mendieta Untitled (Facial hair transplant (1972).

As an artist, de la Torre challenges representations of Mexican masculinity and, as if it was divine order, becomes Salvador, a savior to his transmasculine self, by the end of siempre fui el.