Roberto Tondopó's project Tránsito: Holy Glorious San Sebastián (Spanish: Tránsito, en el nombre Glorioso de San Sebastián) is a deeply personal work that connects the death of his father, who was named Tránsito and came from Chiapa de Corzo, with his own participation in a local festival. In this celebration, men dress as women in honor of Saint Sebastian, a tradition known as the Chuntá. By becoming a Chuntá himself, Tondopó creates a tribute to his father and explores how personal mourning can lead to both individual and cultural transformation.
Against the backdrop of colonial legacy and religious syncretism, Tondopó explores how ritual and performance become sites of resistance. The Fiesta Grande embodies both tradition and contradiction: a deeply conservative community embracing a public ritual of gender fluidity. This tension serves as a point of departure for the project’s broader interrogation of identity, focusing on the instability of fixed categories such as masculinity, sexuality, and national heritage.
The project suggests a symbolic connection between the Chuntá's identity transformation and the broken body of the saint (San Sebastián), proposing that this fragmentation reveals the destabilization of the unitary and normative self and allows for the emergence of new subjective configurations. Blending elements of documentary and staged photography, the work highlights a profound philosophical inquiry into identity construction.
Presented through video installations, photobooks, and public talks, the project’s hybrid and experimental format has been recognized at international festivals such as Les Rencontres d’Arles and the PhotoVogue Festival. Further visibility came via PHotoEspaña surveys (2013; 2015 Develar y detonar), while awards—the Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers (2018–19), a Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award shortlist (2021), and the Capricious Photo Award (2022)—supported its development, positioning Tránsito within contemporary debates on ritual, gender, and cultural memory.
