video recording and score of the first experiment.

composition based on a poem by Michelangelo.

video recording and score of the second experiment

video recording and score of the third experiment

score of the fourth experiment

video recording and score of the fifth experiment

paintings

asemic writing

asemic writing

asemic writing

asemic writing

Mirtha Dermisache, September 2011 (our translation)

performance

graffiti

graffiti

graffiti

video performance

video performance

video performance in which the artist dances in response to the graffiti on the city

documentary Silêncio e fúria - poetas do corpo [Silence and Fury - poets of the body]

the film shows his creative process in collaboration with the LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign Language) interpreter

group to research and practice poetry intertwining LIBRAS and Portuguese, at Museum of Modern Art São Paulo

“To imprint on the body, and from that imprint, from the adoption of that image that is now on your body, you gain the ability to move among all of them.” (p. 183)

“At some point, everyone used to paint themselves, but this rupture between the thinking of white people and that magical thinking led to a distancing from nature, a detachment from that idea of hunting for beauty toward another kind of construction, let’s say, of the idea of beauty—where beauty becomes something you project, not something you capture. Something you radiate as an illusion of permanence. Feeding the illusion that you have duration. And magical thinking—if we agree to use this term—believes we have no certainty that we will still be alive in a moment, or tomorrow. This absence of guarantee, this lack of certainty, frees a person from needing to construct a projection onto the world. There’s no need to keep building a projection because you have no certainty that it’s going anywhere.”

Ainton Krenak interviewed by Pedro Cesarino, 2016 (our translation)

Quote from the book The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman (our translation)

performance 2021: Spell to Become Invisible

2021: Spell to Become Invisible

So, I am particularly interested right now in breaking with representation—I, in some way, gaining awareness and consistency in this effort to break with the dominance or imposition of representation or the violence of representation. I think this is a very powerful element of the possible ruptures available to us now, and that somehow makes possible a deeper break with the colonial tradition, which heavily depends on representation."

Jota Mombaça, interview for the 34th São Paulo Biennial, 2021 (our translation)

I have the desire to communicate without spoken language. During my PhD, I initiated an artistic experiment that drew on my studies in dance, Brazilian Sign Language, martial arts, and visual arts, inspired by Indigenous ritual practices, body painting, and audio-visual works, to create a gestural-visual language. Each movement sequence became a score and was recorded on video. This work became the workshop called Decolonizing Language.

On this page, you'll find records of my creations, along with images and quotes from the references that inform the research shared in the workshop.