Sex Salon: The Museo de Machistán: Creating an Archive and Digital Exhibit of Mexican Lesbian Nightlife

In this talk, Carina Guzmán (Islandia) will discuss the “Museo de Machistán”: the research-creation project that draws on an imagined territory based on Mexican lesbian nightlife, “Machistán”, and the many ways it functions as a queer archive. The project consists of a digital repository and online exhibit aimed to reflect this virtual territory. It is based on the collection of photos and ephemera from the lesbian and queer women’s nightlife organizing collective of which Guzmán was a part in Mexico City in the mid-2000s. Guzmán will discuss the project’s development within her doctoral dissertation and in collaboration with the Cabaret Commons Critical Practice, as well as the process and ethics of gathering the materials and putting them online.

Carina Guzmán (Islandia) is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Information and The Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto and co-editor at The Cabaret Commons Critical Practice. Since 2019, she is the lead convener of the Global South Feminist School of Media and Archives at the Marshall McLuhan Centre for Media and Technology. Carina has an undergraduate degree in History and a Master’s in Geography from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Furthermore, she is a co-founding member and archivist of the Mexican lesbian nightlife collective Meras efímeras and the burlesque group Burlesquimeras: Institutrices de belleza universal.