Lorenza Boettner: Requiem for the Norm

The first monograph on the multimedia art of a daring trans pioneer, edited by Paul B. Preciado

Lorenza Boettner was born Ernst Lorenz Boettner in Chile in 1959. At the age of eight, Boettner was electrocuted while climbing a pylon, following which both arms were amputated. After studying painting in Kassel, Boettner transitioned genders and learned to paint with her feet and mouth, also working in photography, drawing, dance, installation and performance. Boettner died of HIV-related complications in 1994. Although Chilean writers Roberto Bolano and Pedro Lemebel wrote about Boettner in their respective 1996 novels Estrella Distante and Loco Afan, her work was long neglected until its debut at the 2017 Documenta, thanks to the efforts of acclaimed writer, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado. Assembled by Preciado, Requiem for the Norm is the first comprehensive publication on an artist whose work is a celebration of life and a defiance of the processes that seek to desubjectify, desexualize, lock up and "disappear" bodies that are transgender or function differently.