Pedro Lemebel

Pedro Lemebel
Born Pedro Mardones
Santiago
Occupation Reporter, performance artist, chronicler
Language Spanish
Nationality Chilean
Education Plastic arts
Alma mater University of Chile
This name uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Mardones and the second or maternal family name is Lemebel.

Pedro Segundo Mardones Lemebel (21 November 1952 – 23 January 2015) was an openly gay Chilean essayist, chronicler, and novelist. He was known for his cutting critique of authoritarianism and for his humorous depiction of Chilean popular culture, from a queer perspective. He was nominated for Chile's National Literature Prize in 2014. He died of cancer of the larynx on 23 January 2015 in Santiago, Chile.[1][2]

Life

Early career

Lemebel was born in El Zanjon de la Aguada,[3] a poor neighborhood in Santiago to the family of Peter and Violeta Mardones. In the late 1980s, Lemebel chose to be identified by his maternal name which was Lemebel as his choice for surname. He attended an industrial school of carpentry and metal forging and later studied plastic art at University of Chile's Art School. He subsequently became a high school art teacher[4] but was let go based on the presumption of his homosexuality.

Lemebel attended writing workshops to hone his skills and network with other writers, his first writing recognition was in 1982, when he won an award for his short story, Porque el tiempo está cerca. In 1986, he published as his first major work, the book Incontables, a compilation of short stories[5] under the feminist publication label, Ergo Sum.[6] A year later, he co-founded a performance collective that used the tactics of intervention and disruption of events to raise public consciousness about the struggles of minorities in Chile. The disruption and performances of the collective brought Lemebel into public limelight in Chile. In 1986, he disrupted a meeting of Chile's left wing groups opposed to Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. He entered the meeting in high heels and with makeup on his face depicting an hammer and sickle extending from his mouth to his left eyebrow. At the event, he spoke about his manifesto, ‘Manifest: I Speak for my Difference’ criticizing homophobia in left wing politics.[4]

Lemebel was widely known as a communist. Being distant from the Communist Party, he was a close friend of its leader, Gladys Marín, until her death in 2005.

Yeguas del Apocalipsis

In 1987, Lemebel co-founded with Francisco Casas the collective, Yeguas del Apocalipsis (The Mares of the Apocalypse), an arts performance group. The group performed in exhibitions and cultural events reaching its intended audience through actions that ranged from performance arts, video, installation, transvestism and photography.[6] Many of their performances challenged the heteronormative social paradigms of gender and sex and invited individuals to reflect on the plight of minorities repressed under Pinochet and then further stigmatized with by the advent by AIDS.[7]

In 1989, both Lemebel and Casas recreated a series of vignettes under the direction of Mario Vivado. The portraits later became part of an exhibition at the D12 Gallery in Chile.[8] Casas and Lemebel posed as Buster Keaton, Marilyn Monroe, the sisters from garcia Lorca's La Casa de Bernarda Alba and other icons of the Chilean gay commnunity. In the 1990s, he returned to writing and published a string of urban chronicles.

Urban chronicles and other writings

Earlier in his career, Lemebel had attended workshops of the Society of Chilean Writers and gained the friendship of some feminist writers such as Pia Barros[4] who later helped published his first book, Incontables. He returned to writing in the 1990s starting with series of urban chronicles that was published in Chilean newspapers, magazines and read on the radio. In 1995 and 1996, Lemebel wrote two books in a chronicle and hybrid literary style,[3] a combination of reportage, memoir, public address, fiction and socio-political historical analysis. In 1995, he published La Esquina es mi corazón: Crónica urbana (The Corner is My Heart), writing about Chilean history from the perspectives of young adults raised in poor neighborhoods and those who are stigmatized socially.[3] In 1996, he published El Loco Afán: Crónicas de Sidario (Mad Urge: AIDS Chronicles), a piece of 31 short texts and images that detailed the journey of a group of marginalized gay youths in Chile through the period of dictatorship to the outbreak of AIDS. Lemebel was given a Guggenheim Foundation scholarship in 1999 for his literary accomplishments leading to increase appearances in forums and seminars in Chile and US.[3]

He gained international recognition with his novel Tengo miedo torero which was the first book translated into English.[3] In 2013, he was given the José Donoso Award. He died of laryngeal cancer in January 2015.

List of works

Notes

  1. ↑ Grupo Copesa (23 January 2015). "Muere el escritor nacional Pedro Lemebel a los 62 años". latercera.com. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  2. ↑ A Surreal End for an Unforgettable Queen: Pedro Lemebel, 1952-2015
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Poblete, Juan (2015). "Pedro Lemebel: In Memoriam". Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia. 24 (3).
  4. 1 2 3 Averis, Kate (2015). "Pedro Lemebel: farewell to a queer icon".
  5. ↑ Pino-Ojeda, Walescka (2006). "Gay Proletarian Memory: the Chronicles of Pedro Lemebe". Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. 20 (3).
  6. 1 2 Gonzalez, Jill (2012). "114-118". Resisting bodies: Margins as a site of political transgression in the works of diamela eltit, guadalupe santa cruz and pedro lemebel (Thesis). Boston University.
  7. ↑ Subero, Gustavo. The Cultural Politics of Media and Popular Culture : Representations of HIV/AIDS in Contemporary Hispano-American and Caribbean Culture : Cuerpos suiSIDAs. Farnham, GB: Routledge, 2016. P. 12
  8. ↑ Subero. P. 48

Further reading

External links

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