Pink T-shirt

My name is M., and I am a trans woman and migrant from Peru. I have been living in Italy for over four years, specifically in Rome. Deciding to leave the city where I was born and had lived for so long was not easy, but it was necessary to safeguard my life, rediscover myself, and make peace with who I am. Living as a trans person is not easy, and neither is migrating and moving from one place to another. Living as a trans person is not easy, and neither is migrating from one place to another. When I decided to leave, I had to choose which of my belongings to take with me: some were practical, some held sentimental value, and others felt essential. Clothes fell somewhere in between. I had some pieces I found hard to give up, ones I kept for special occasions, and others I wore more out of practicality. In the end, I filled an enormous backpack with a lot of things: some nice clothes, even a pair of high heels, which I never wore and had to abandon along the way. After a while, I understood that I should stick to practicality: comfortable, lightweight trousers, one or two dresses for special occasions, and a few t-shirts, like the one you see on display.

Dressing when you live in the same place is not the same as dressing when you live in different places, in constant change. Clothes must adapt to different climates and conditions, but also to emotional changes. I often asked myself: How do I feel facing all these changes of place and clothing? Do the clothes I find along the way reflect my personality, who I am? And the ones I left behind or lost, how much of my personality did they carry? Did it hurt to leave them or lose them? Did a part of me go with them?

Many of the clothes I picked up along the way were given to me as gifts, second-hand, and in no way reflected my personality. Many were too large or in colors I didn’t like, but I had to wear them because they were the only ones I had at the time, and I didn’t have much money to buy clothes that would make me truly feel comfortable. Sometimes I managed to find clothes I liked, and I tried to keep them as long as possible.

The t-shirt on display in this exhibition is one of those pieces I managed to hold onto for a long time, and it holds sentimental value for me because I wore it on many occasions, in different contexts, and I met different people while wearing it. It has become part of my memories.

Migration has taught me many things, and one of them has been the ability to let go of things and people more easily, not to grow too attached to them, and to separate the emotional from the material. I have learned that things and people do not belong to us and that they are temporary; that they are with us when we need them, to help us or to put us to the test, and that we should be grateful they were there.

This t-shirt was with me when I needed it, and now it is here, in this exhibition. Why? Perhaps you need it? Do you need to see it? What will its fate be after this exhibition? If this t-shirt does not return to me after this show, I hope it can be of help to whoever wears it, just as it helped me, and I would wish it a safe journey.