Nando Messias' Collection

NANDO MESSIAS ON TRANSING THE ARCHIVE

Nancy/Nando Messias (all pronouns) is a Brazilian born, London-based performance artist, choreographer and queer academic. Their work straddles performance art, dance and theatre. Their performances combine beautiful images with a fierce critique of gender, visibility and violence.  At the very heart of Nando Messias’ costume collection, is Nando Messias’ very own heart. Her meticulously archived stage wardrobe– catalogued by colour, era, material, price, place of purchase– is bursting with 1920’s and 30’s taffeta silk ballgowns, stiletto shoes as high and sharp as Italian knives and dozens of trés elegant vintage clutches. Each piece has been acquired for, worn in and saved from a body of sequential performances she wrote, self-directed and performed, beginning with A Sissy’s Walk.

Keep your eyes out for the forthcoming article that will draw upon a recorded conversation in 2025 between performance artist, choreographer and queer academic Nando Messias and E-J Scott, founder/curator of the Museum of Transology.

Nando shares with E-J around why they chose to donate their incredible archive to the Museum of Transology, and what transing the archive can possibly mean. Together they toss around ideas about how the failure to exist (for the most part) in the colonial archive provides trans people with the freedom to imagine who we were, where we have been and what we were doing… And how this might be the ultimate power of ‘transing’ heritage engagement: the unbridled potential for the trans community to liberate ourselves from the societal violence we are enduring in this shameful anti-trans epoch, by exalting our transcestors in a proactive act of collective memory-making. They’ll prophesise that the trans community can archive ourselves onto the right side of history… Because knowing we have ‘always existed’ is enough to inspire a survival instinct, even though we may not (yet, or ever) know exactly who existed before us. And that perhaps trans heritage engagement could ultimately be the act of taking inspiration from history’s hints to devise a collective past that cements our future.

Work continues on archiving Nando’s collection, including fundraising for a community project to do it collectively. 

Find out more about Nando's practice here: www.nandomessias.com