Aguarela Project — Plan of Initiatives to Combat Discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Saúde em Português is a Non-Governmental Organization for Development with international headquarters in Coimbra. Founded in 1993, it has already covered more than 600,000 beneficiaries in the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries and in territories of conflict, war and catastrophe.

Among its main objectives, Saúde em Português aims to promote social and community integration, health, gender equality, sustainable development and human rights; promote, disseminate and apply development support, humanitarian assistance and emergency aid; increase volunteering in Portugal and internationally; as well as promote and develop cultural activities.

Saúde em Português defends and contributes to a fair and egalitarian society that fights for effective change, in the sense of extinguishing structural discrimination that perpetuates and legitimizes unjust and unequal power relations. In particular, it reflects, participates in, and promotes respect and equality among all human beings, defending the right to exercise full citizenship.

Saúde em Português is currently developing, in Coimbra, the Aguarela project — Plan of Initiatives to Combat Discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity which aims to promote the awareness and information of society in general and of specific target audiences on issues related to sexual orientation, gender identity and the rights of the LGBTI population, promoting their integration. At the same time, Aguarela's Support Office is operating, which provides psychological, social and legal support to the LGBTI population and their families [Monday to Friday, Mobile: 926 848 028 (from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.) — E-mail: gab.aguarela@saudeportugues.org].

In this context, Saúde em Português presents a Photography Exhibition, designed by photographer Pedro Medeiros, in which an unprecedented set of portraits of women and men, Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Transsexuals, Transsexuals, who in their daily and associative daily lives fight for the defense of their sexual orientation and for the right to Gender Identity.

Among the women and men who stand up for this project are members of the activist associations ActiBIstas — Coletivo Pela Visibilidade Bissexual; Grupo Transexual Portugal; ILGA Portugal – Intervenção Lésbica, Gay, Bissexual e Transgénero; não te prives – Grupo de Defesa dos Direitos Sexuais; Opus Gay — Obra Gay Associação; Panteras Rosa — Frente de Combate à LesBiGayTransFobia; PortugalGay.pt; rede ex aequo — Associação de jovens lgbts.
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To be human

In 2006, in Portugal, Gisberta Júnior, 44, Brazilian, HIV-positive, homeless and transsexual, was beaten by a group of young people for three days and thrown into a well of a building under construction, where she ended up drowning.

She was the victim of a crime motivated by discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Saúde em Português is a health and human rights organization. There are no major or minor rights, there are rights.

For this reason, we cannot ignore the discrimination of difference, the disrespect for identity, the contempt for freedom.

With the intrepid coordination of Ana Rita Brito and the sublime art of Pedro Medeiros, Saúde em Português presents the exhibit Aguarela, which portrays human beings and combats vilification in human rights.

Hernâni Caniço
Saúde em Portugal's President

Being a person

“At first I was sick, then a faggot, then a homosexual, and now I'm a citizen.”

António Serzedelo

In our daily lives we talk about equal rights and equal opportunities for people, but from speaking to acting we fall far short of reality.

For years and years, throughout our history, there have been people who have struggled to be recognized in a society that creates labels, that stigmatizes, and that even criminalizes what goes beyond normativity.

Although we are aware that being “different” is not (yet) possible, we struggle daily to alter consciousness and defend rights.

Being gay, lesbian, trans, or intersex is not being sick.

Pedro Medeiros' exhibit Aguarela portrays people who have been convicted, discriminated against, and who isolated themselves and fought for their identity over the past 60 years.

With this we want these people to inspire each one of you, in your daily lives, to fight for full equality of rights and so that we can take another step in democracy in Portugal.

Ana Rita Brito
Aguarela Project's Coordinator

Lucid Camera

I don't appreciate gender art. And the work that Pedro Medeiros exhibits at the Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra for the exhibit Aguarela is not gender art. Gender art thrives on the circumstance of the exploration of a certain preconceived idea of strangeness to a preconceived idea of the majority. It's certainly not because of the exploration of strangeness that Robert Mapplethorpe's photos are remarkable.

In this project, Pedro knew how to deviate from the recurring clichés of the representation of minorities - whether ethnic, racial, sexual, or social. In all images, the photographer's continuous quest to capture the dignity of the object — subject — portrayed dominates. It is a cerebral, lucid view of those who have the exact notion of responsibility for the images they will make public, and of the echoes that will resonate from them. Like Diego Velázquez in the face of the bufón calabacillas, in the blind veil that blurs the strabismus of the portrayed's eyes, or in the Surrender of Breda, where winners and losers are treated with the same dignity. I can't find a higher form of exaltation than non-exclusion, a form that only art makes possible and that Velázquez exercised like few others.

Pedro Medeiros and I never planned a trip to the Prado to see all of Velásquez together. But it was always about Velásquez that we talked about during this project.

Carlos Antunes