Travesti Biológica is a performative concert by Mavi Veloso of her eponymous album released by BicudaRec in early 2022. Spanning elements of pop, R&B, hip hop, trap, electropop, synth pop, dance, tecnobrega, and reggaeton, Travesti Biológica can be described as a trans-genre-electro pop music and performance project that challenges beauty norms and attempts to maintain a so-called “natural” hegemony of cis-gendered existence. Instead, Travesti Biológica empowers and celebrates the beauty and resilience of trans and non-binary bodies. The title itself is a provocation, and a response to the normative uses of the terms “nature,” “biology” or “reality,” often conjured to establish and justify a societal order in which cis-gendered people are held as the norm from which transgender, intersex, and non-binary people “deviate.”
The biological tranny identifies as femme. She may have a transgender penis, or not. She may have a biologically, psychologically, medically perfect vagina, female, male or both, or none at all. She is not concerned about genitalia. She makes herself strong as a femme, multi-spirited person. She makes herself powerful as transvestigenere.
The larger project Travesti Biológica—comprising the album, the performative concert and a series of music videos—focuses on Mavi Veloso’s personal narratives as a Latin American travesti migrating from Brazil to Europe. It also speaks to the diaspora of trans women more generally, their oppression, battle to survive, and need to discover new horizons.
