Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco

The Body Remembers

Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco

Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco

The footage was collected at AIDS fundraisers held at the time in Vancouver East Side, Canada from 1994 to 1996. The Body Remembers chronicles Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco's struggle to make drag into a form of artesania (not art) that heals. Drag allows us to present our damaged selves to others when we are disfigured and ugly by conventional standards. Ibanez-Carrasco struggled with Kaposi's Sarcoma and other AIDS-related opportunistic infections at that time and drag shows were a way to bring his extended family around him and to create awareness about AIDS.