Dan Allon
Contemporary Art
Ghost and Golem – Chapter III: Clinic at the Park (2022) was a solo exhibition by Dan Allon at PF Gallery, Curitiba. The installation unfolds as a short narrative that blends crime investigation, telenovela, and archival display, exploring family conflict, gender identity, and cultural stereotypes through a queer lens.
At its center is the story of Dandira, a trans woman related to the artist who lived in São Paulo during the 1970s military dictatorship. She was in a relationship with Aloísio, a police officer who murdered her in an attempt to prevent her from undergoing gender-affirming surgery with pioneering surgeon Georges Burou.
Designed as a personal archive, the exhibition combines drawings, recreated letters, newspaper clippings, invitations, floor drawings, curtains, documents, and a sound work, inviting visitors to reconstruct a life nearly erased from history.
Curator: Sagi Refael
Gallerist: Eduardo Amato Cardoso
PF Gallery, Curitiba, Brazil
July–November 2022
FULL Q and A - Sagi Refael and Dan Allon - PRESS HERE.
"Dandush,
I really appreciate what you are doing, and hope you will find Oli's family.
Love, Mom"
"As opposed to her Polacas friends, Dandira was a woman. Few knew about her Jewish upbringing as a boy, or her true story as a Holocaust survivor who managed to reach Brazil during World War II.
Dandira’s friends altered their bodies to approximate the other sex without claiming the subjectivity of that sex. As the years passed, she found it impossible to live with the social duality of female attributes and a homosexual subjectivity. Dandira wanted more—she wanted completion. She wanted to love and to be loved.
However, many of the men who sought relationships with Polacas or travesties were indifferent to their goals or happiness, and disapproved of any change in that dynamic. These men saw travesties and Polacas only as “perfected male” objects of desire for themselves."
"Dear Max and Mirjam,
I am sorry I have not been writing or calling for a while. I had many performances lately in Taib, and I have also been doing some work with the community here which takes up all of my time.
I wanted to come and visit you in Israel this year, but I am going under a surgery that I have been long waiting for. Don't worry, I am not sick, but it is a lifesaving operation and after that all will be all right. Then I hope I could come visit, later.
I think about you all the time, and I hope you are doing well in the farm.
Love,
Oli"
"Rio de Janeiro, 20 June 1975
Dandira, my love,
I cannot hide it anymore—you probably realized it by now. I am so used to being misunderstood, and yet you seem to read my mind with ease. When we first met, I thought to myself: this is impossible. How can someone understand me after only one meeting? It must be a joke, or a trick.
Your marvelous blue jacket mesmerized me—the way you shook off the pollen with so few movements and words, like the wonderful flower that you are, the kind one only hears about in letters from home.
And now that we have met more than once, I still cannot forget our first meeting. I love your letters about it—even the ones where you crossed out words several times. I do not like things hidden from me, but I love those letters nevertheless, like long sleepless hot nights. I want to come and spend nights like those with you in São Paulo.
Since I returned home, I cannot concentrate on my patrols because I keep thinking about you. I was hoping to receive a letter from you, and even decided not to write again until I did. I know you are busy with your shows, but I could not wait any longer. Yes, I need you—I need you very much, my love. You are the only one I can talk to about the beach, the clouds, my dreams. Please do not ever change. Every time I see a flower smiling at me, I think of you.
I go to the same boteco for lunch every day, still wearing my uniform. Even though I am quite well known in the neighborhood, no one says anything. They treat me with respect, like everyone else. Perhaps some of them do not even know who I am. I know their faces by heart—perhaps even their heartbeats. Yet I am like a fly above the food, just a fly that blends in, listens, and waits.
Oh—and I met someone from the party on the street. You must know him—Roberto, or something like that, the one who went to Cambridge.
I am drawn to these neighborhoods. I want them to have law and order. But I cannot wait to leave, to move to you, to move on with my life, to take off the past and throw it away. You must feel very lonely without me, no? I tried calling you, but you did not answer.
I will come to see you soon—on the 10th or the 11th, depending on work. Wait for me. I will look for you.
See you soon, my tender one.
Kisses,
Aloísio"
Special thanks:
Casa do Povo and the team, Benjamin Seroussi, Miriam and Shimon Allon, Eduardo Amato Cardoso, Sagi Refael, Franziska Harnisch, Mariana Zanetti, Oz Gora, Iris Weisman, Yiftah Peled, Tacto Atelie Coletivo, Dimas Celestino.
Photos: Jonas Sanson.