The history of MasterChef, both the celebrity version and the normal version, has left great television moments, being the public channel’s favorite program for many. This gastronomic talent show is already giving a lot to talk about on social networks due to its curious list of 16 contestants, which has been known for a few months now. Among the most prominent names we can find politicians, artists and influencers. There are also others such as Topacio Fresh, which cannot be classified in a single category.
The Argentinean presents herself as a fervent activist for LGTBIQ+ rights, a dancer, art gallery owner and even an artist. According to these first definitions, Topacio has the best qualities to become one of the contestants who will be most talked about in this edition, especially if we add to this that she has participated in other cooking programs such as Ven a cenar conmigo: Gourmet Edition.
Topacio’s story is an example of overcoming and effort. At a very young age she decided to leave her native Rosario, Argentina. The reason was mainly because her parents did not accept that she had been born with the wrong body: “When they discovered girls’ clothes in my backpack or saw that I refused to cut my hair, or that I was very effeminate, or that I was starting to like boys, of course it was hard for them to understand,” she said in an interview.
Convinced that she wanted to rebuild her life outside Argentina, she headed to Spain to start. She arrived in Ibiza, where she worked as a go-go dancer in a nightclub. After many sacrifices and after saving enough, she settled in Madrid. It was in the capital where she began her new life, becoming a regular at nightclubs and making friends with key people in the sector.
Her most important friendship, and the one that would help her achieve the fame she wanted, was the one she had with Alaska and Mario. Topacio was quick to show her worth, becoming one of the indispensable pieces in Alaska’s dance corps.
The Argentinean artist was part of Fangoria for years, until in 2008 she found her way by opening an art gallery with her current husband, Israel Cortes. The Fresh Gallery became one of the cultural hotspots in Madrid with artists of all levels, from renowned personalities such as Fabio McNamara, Juan Gatti or Bruce LaBruce to the most up-and-coming artists. Finally, after the pandemic, they had to close the gallery because the results they were getting were not as expected.
Topacio has been very clear about her identity and is proud of it. She admits that one of the things she misses most about La Fresh Gallery is this connection with families with children who are transgender “and they asked me what my son’s life was going to be like, and I told them that first they had to treat him as what he was,” she explained in an interview with Diez Minutos.
Her name also preserves part of this struggle within the collective, since it was chosen to empower herself and turn around the insult that her classmates dedicated to her: “It was a joke that they made of me at school because I looked like Topacio from the soap opera. I started to cry. When the time came, I called myself: María Topacio,” she confessed.
