Giulia Iacolutti

Casa Azul is a socio-visual investigation of the life story of five trans women incarcerated in one of Mexico City’s male penitentiaries. The project shows the process of identity construction and the bodily practices of people whose bodies are considered doubly abject, because of their identity and their condition of isolation. Trans women prisoners, forced to wear blue, nickname the prison the “blue house,” evoking the imprisonment endured by the bodies themselves. Having found a biology textbook from the 1990s in the meeting room led Iacolutti to make a parallel with biological science that recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life. The general procedure of hematoxylin-eosin staining used in histology paints tissue samples pink: photographs printed in cyanotype, an ancient method of photographic printing, characterized by the colour Prussian blue, are associated with pink photographs of healthy prostate cells. If blue evokes the outside and passive identification, pink speaks of the inside, the self and self-determination. Casa Azul shows the eternal binary struggle these people face in their everyday lives to be who they are: women.