Under the Limelight

Artefact
2025

'Under the Limelight' combines 19th century stagecraft and modern technology to produce contemporary phantasmagoria. A limelight lamp is used in combination with a kinetic apparatus to generate and project moving image.
The resulting projections depict gender-bending chimeras and spectral bodies that embrace queer monstrosity, flickering between presence and absence. A tactical projection device conceived to temporarily occupy and take over public façades and architectural surfaces, enabling a luminous space for trans representation, memory and storytelling. Lurking in suspension above ground, these shimmering apparitions are set to haunt the space as long as trans* lives remain under threat and justice remains unresolved.

The first takeover was carried out at the façade of a watchtower in Cádiz, popularly known as la Bella Escondida. The project was later presented to an international audience in Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week 2025, at the DAE Graduation Show. (Eindhoven, Netherlands)

Model and performer: Martyrio / Marty Van Walré
Production assistance: Guoda Sulskyte

Phantasmagoria at Cour des Capucins (1797)

3D scan of Martyrio’s body (2025)