Papaya Kuir – interviewed by Tropical Tap Water

For the 30th edition of de Appel’s Curatorial Programme (CP) we have welcomed four collectives who are learning and practising lumbung as a model and method for collective organisation. The CP is geared towards taking the lumbung practices of documenta fifteen as a case study. Lumbung during documenta fifteen developed into both a rhizomatic collective of collectives, and the practice of decentralised collective redistribution, transforming the art institution and its exhibitionary logic. This edition of the CP is dedicated to collectives whose art and curatorial practice are distinguished by their role as a conduit for the communities with which they engage. The programme is in collaboration with Sandberg Institute’s Temporary Master Programme and Gudskul’s Collective Study and extends into 2025/2026 as a fellowship.

Tropical Tap Water interviewed the participating collectives. Here you can find their conversation with Papaya Kuir, a lesbo-transfeminist collective created by and for Latin American migrants and refugees residing in the Netherlands and the larger community interested in their struggle.

Daniel, Tropical Tap Water (D, TTW): Thank you so much Alejandra for joining me for this conversation. My name is Daniel Aguilar. I am part of a collective called Tropical Tap Water, and we were invited to conduct this interview in the context of de Appel’s Curatorial programme. Could you start by introducing yourself and tell me a bit about Papaya Kuir?

Alejandra, Papaya Kuir (A, PK): Yes. I’d be happy to. Thank you so much for having me today. My name is Alejandra Ortiz. I am a Mexican trans woman living in the Netherlands since 2015. I am a community builder and a writer, someone who brings people together. I work on doing translations, advocacy, writing articles, and organizing events for and by the trans community and with a focus on trans people with an intersectional lived experience. I am a co-founder and part of Papaya Kuir, a trans lesbo feminist queer collective of migrants and refugees from Abya Yala who are living or working in the Netherlands and who are migrating to the Netherlands. Papaya Kuir is born out of the need to have a chosen family away from family, which is something that migrant communities experience a lot. This lack, this sense of not having a link to the lands where we come from.

Papaya Kuir focuses on three main aspects. The first one is emergency help. The Netherlands is certainly a very rich country, where people do eventually get help. But in the meantime, some needs cannot wait. And there are those outside the system whose needs are invisible to the state. So, if there's a situation of a trans sex worker or a migrant queer woman from Abya Yala that is currently in the Netherlands and needs a place to sleep or a bicycle or needs help with translations or needs money to buy groceries, we step in. And with the help of our extended network, we get them this emergency help. We are by no means saviors, we are just people. Peers helping peers to create a bigger network of Love (if you want to call it like that).

The second reason for Papaya Kuir to exist is because of demonstrations against injustice. We've been very active since the start of our collective, protesting with different movements. In seeking climate justice, and in the case of Palestine; joining protests and demonstrations against the zionist project that seeks to remove them from their land.

And lastly, the third source pillar of why we exist is the most fun part: we want to create, foster and harvest a generation of Migrant and Refugee people with intersected stories who can talk for ourselves. We don't need people to talk for us. And for this, we organize somatic workshops, healing sessions, performances and festivals. The idea is that the talent from the community gets a push from the community. When we organise a festival, whoever cooks, whoever does hair, whoever does this or that gets paid, because we believe that the best way to empower people is to pay them for what they know how to do, that way they can become more confident in their own talents. We are talking about a segment of the population that in our Abya Yala, here and everywhere we are always underemployed, undereducated and very underrepresented. Is time to change this!

D, TTW: Thank you. I would like to ask you about your involvement and enrollment in the Lumbung Practice programme. What are you going to do there?

A, PK: I was invited by people in my network, also by people from the Papaya Kuir extended family, to be part of this project. I'm not an academic. I don't have — like many or most trans women from Latin America — access to formal education. So, for me, most things I know are self-taught. But this comes with a limit. I don't know how to speak or talk or write in academic terms. By being part of this Curatorial programme with de Appel, I want to learn how to use the Lumbung, this tool to shorten the gap between academia and the trans, queer and migrant communities. The institutions involved in the programme can also learn from us as well. About our ways of doing things, of overcoming and thriving despite the circumstances. It's an exchange that is not vertical. In a way Papaya Kuir was already living a Lumbung philosophy from the beginning; we just did not have the word. By being part of the Lumbung cosmos, we want to expand our network and expand our knowledge, learn new ways of the commons.

D, TTW: How do you see yourself as a mainly activist collective being part of an art programme?

A, PK: Oh, but we are artists too. Patri, one of the founders, is a classically trained musician, Nadia is an scenographist and dancer, Pau is a dancer and a professor. And I am a writer, not professionally, but life made me a writer. I have published one book and the second is on the way. So we are artists. We discovered that in this process of creating a space in a chosen family, our talents become better directed, and we can bring the talents of other people into the art world. I think this is needed. The art world has always been one in which marginalized communities are able to take up some space. Not in a total way, but some space at least. Certainly more than in science, politics or religion. In any case, is time we converge, mix and learn from other communities and together create new narratives.

D, TTW: I also wanted to ask you about the migration issue. On this part of the Atlantic usually migration goes towards the USA, from South America to North America. But I think little is known about the people that migrated from Abya Yala — parts of South America, Central America and Caribbean — to Europe. Could you share your experiences from a queer, trans background?

A, PK: That is definitely true. The numbers of migrant people and queer communities from Abya Yala coming to Europe is rather small compared to the groups that go to the USA. Nevertheless we are people, we have needs, dreams and a longing for family connections. So when Pau, Nadia and I decided that we needed Papaya Kuir it came out of the need of being and feeling invisible. It's important for us that we are visible and that people know we exist. I think it's important that we map our survival talents that we accumulated from every place we went to. The numbers of Latin American people living in the US or Canada are so big that they are part of a big conversation on that side of the planet. But on this side of the Atlantic, we encounter that other migrant groups get more attention, not precisely the best kind of attention. They are as marginalized and vilified as Mexican people in the US. In a sense, that is another conversation to have.

D, TTW: When did you start organizing as Papaya Kuir?

A, PK: I came to the Netherlands almost ten years ago. In 2017, I met Nadia and Pau, and it was at that moment that we realized we needed this community. For years we've been talking about it but nothing happened. In 2020, we decided to be a collective. Pau, Nadia, Patri, Aleja and Lauren were individually already doing things to help our communities. But it was not enough as one person against the world. So, by coming together, we've been able to create and change the discourse.

D, TTW: How do you define who are members or coordinators at Papaya Kuir?

A, PK: Papaya is not a dogmatic concept, we are very much open for change. Having said that, we are at the moment with four core members: Nadia Bekkers, Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla, Patri Roa Johansen and myself. Until last month, we were six including Lauren and Aleja. Besides the core group, we have a board for legal reasons, composed of Natalia, Aleja and Sandra. Decisions are made by the core group or in consensus, but not by voting. We talk things through until we all agree on it. Besides the core group and the board, there is the Papaya Kuir extended family, basically anyone who, in the past four years, needed our help or extended help or support with our projects. You see them more present when we organize festivals or workshops. We don't plan to open Papayas in every place, because we believe that every place and every situation has its own particularities and they need projects born out of the needs of each location. But I want to say that there are Papayas in Spain, Brazil and Colombia, as a result of this exchange of human connections.

D, TTW: How do you organize economically?

A, PK: Papaya Kuir is not a job. It's something that we do to be family, to protect each other, to create a space and a new narrative. We do have subsidized projects and based on these projects, members of Papaya Kuir can get paid for organizing. We don't get money every month, it is mostly volunteer based. I am currently focused on the Curatorial programme, but at the same time, I work as a public speaker and as a writer. Each one of us has their own jobs and ways to make an income.

D, TTW: I am curious about the name. How did you come up with it?

A, PK: In a Latin American context the papaya is a symbol for the vulva and the vagina. So, we wanted to reclaim that as a queer (kuir) papaya. We are very much aware that queer is a very anglo-saxon term. Nevertheless, we said it's a good idea to play with the term in our name and logo. Our logo is based on Chiquita Banana, which is a company that did a lot of damage in Central and South America. We wanted to reclaim this as well, and play with it and be sardonic about it. On the logo of Papaya Kuir, you see, instead of a banana dancing, a dancing papaya, and below it says “producto de exportación” (product of exportation). We find it very paradoxical that coffee, gold, oil, petroleum and fruits come to the Global North so easily, but for people, there are always these restrictions, despite people being the best product of every country.

D, TTW: Would you like to add anything else to this conversation that you think is important?

R, PK: I have written an article presenting Papaya Kuir which can be read here.

Tropical Tap Water are professional jammers, open for hire for birthday parties, weddings, exhibitions, mournings, festivals and what not. Our dream is to play in a conference. The members are Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba, Diana Cantarey, Julian Abraham “Togar” and Simnikiwe Buhlungu.