Under the Limelight

Artefact
2025

“Under the Limelight” revives limelight projection as a tactical device for trans visibility. Combining 19th century stagecraft with new technology, the project addresses historical and current forms of queer erasure.

Quicklime, a caustic substance once used in the enforced disappearances of dissident bodies during Spain’s White Terror, is turned into light source. Through limelight projection, ephemeral bodies reappear in a contemporary phantasmagoria.

T he 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)
→ The project was awarded Cum Laude upon graduating from the Social Design MA at DAE.

Phantasmagoria at Cour des Capucins (1797)

3D scan of Martyrio’s body (2025)

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