Canela: Gender Affirmation and Care

The film Canela, by Argentinian filmmaker Cecilia del Valle, shows the daily life of a trans woman in Rosario, Argentina, ten years after the beginning of her gender affirmation. In the film she contemplates whether she should undergo sexual affirmation surgery or not. The social and economic struggle that the decision entails is revealed through a number of human relations, events, and locations across urban space. By translating Canela’s story to Zurich, the project imagines a space that supports gender affirmation in Zurich.

Canela grew up in the Blüemliquartier, a neighbourhood of single-family terraced houses in Altstetten. At some point she moved out, studied, started a family with her first wife, with whom she raised her two sons. At the age of 48, she began to express her inner self and live her feminine gender identity. At 58 she decides to return to her childhood home, her mother’s former house.

A gender affirmation surgery starts with a period of 3–6 days in the hospital followed by around 2–3 months of resting time for complete healing. During this time, the person is dependent on the additional support of friends, family, and acquaintances who are able and willing to provide care work. This includes assistance with household chores, cooking, personal care, and transport to medical appointments.

As not everyone who undergoes gender affirmation surgery has a social network to rely on or a suitable space to endure the recovery process, this project provides a space of care post gender affirmation surgery. The house where a host lives also includes rooms for two guests in need of post-operational care. It is an interplay between a domestic and an institutional space that aims to provide a familiar environment for this time of healing. The house of the mother becomes the Mother’s House, where the mother, respectively the host, belongs to the trans community. There are several actors – nurses, friends, family, etc. – that enter and leave the house with different frequency and stay for various periods of time. Through the spatial combination of formal and informal care, we aim to provide a safer space for this very vulnerable period of time for the trans body in a domestic and familiar environment.