Carlos Motta

Searching for We’wha

The series Searching for We’wha is composed of five photographic triptychs combining photographs from New Mexico and Arizona with excerpts from American Indian poetry in an attempt to reconstruct imaginary aspects of the life of We’Wha—a famous member of the Zuni tribe, who was born male but who lived a feminine gender expression. With this work, Carlos Motta aims to question gender fluidity, indeterminacy, neutrality and non-conformity, using We’wha as an image of the ways in which Two-Spirit American Indians express gender in non-Western non-traditional ways. They are often accepted and revered by their tribes, and in We’wha’s case she even became an official representative of their social interests. The project documents Indigenous territories, ruins and sacred landscapes as it invokes We’wha and the ways in which certain traditions have been violently erased. We’wha will never be found since she doesn’t exist anywhere beyond colonial narratives, but the photographic and textual trajectories reveal Western epistemological and representational processes and their ingrained moralism.