Discourses of Necropolitics
Discourses of Necropolitics investigates the mechanisms through which death, disposability, and systemic violence are normalized, aestheticized, and operationalized in contemporary society.
Drawing from Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, the project examines how states, institutions, and media construct narratives that determine which lives are grievous, visible, or valuable.
We The People
Reproductions in larger formats of biometric photographs, rehearsing the notion of identification even in the face of democratic erosion.
The search for identity originates in a space of biopolitical crisis and is a direct consequence of colonization.
The 13 portrayed individuals — Indigenous, African-American, and Latinx — represent the 13 stripes of the American flag, or the original 13 colonies.
The “afterimage” effect in the work suggests not only a revelation of the images themselves but also a space for reflection. When the experiment is carried out and the viewer stares at the negative image for 30 seconds, the eyes attempt to continue the image on a blank surface. Physiologically, the brain and the eyes seek equilibrium, and thus the image is revealed in its positive state.
The negative view in which the works are displayed may represent the perception of the privileged — those who believe that “we are all equal” under the law, the constitution, and history. But we are not.
Above all the pillars of a nation’s construction, non-white people have historically suffered — and continue to suffer — the consequences of a colonized society. Blood was spilled for these red stripes so that something could be built.
Our blood.
“We the people.”
Resistencia
The tattoo was made on the central axis, purposely to cause tension in the spine and the peripheral nervous system.
Classified as an extension of the central nervous system (CNS), the spinal cord consists of the encephalon and spinal cord. It begins in the lower part
of the brainstem and terminates in the lower dorsal part, thus forming the medullary cone.
A collection of nerves, known as the cauda equina, leaves the lower part of the spinal cord (medullary cone) and serves to provide us sensibility
and movement in the legs.
The tattoo as done in this region, causes involuntary movements and pain in other parts of the body, where the tattoo is not being done, in addition
to dizziness and headaches. The intention is in every action, the tattoo be done within the stroke, until one day, this whole map is painted red.
The countries of Latin America walk together, strain together and the red symbolizes blood but also revolution, that after the tattoo, the blood
is staked in a white fabric, like a flag.
O Estado (Performance) & Castração (Object)
The tattoo was made on the central axis, purposely to cause tension in the spine and the peripheral nervous system.
Classified as an extension of the central nervous system (CNS), the spinal cord consists of the encephalon and spinal cord. It begins in the lower part
of the brainstem and terminates in the lower dorsal part, thus forming the medullary cone.
A collection of nerves, known as the cauda equina, leaves the lower part of the spinal cord (medullary cone) and serves to provide us sensibility
and movement in the legs.
The tattoo as done in this region, causes involuntary movements and pain in other parts of the body, where the tattoo is not being done, in addition
to dizziness and headaches. The intention is in every action, the tattoo be done within the stroke, until one day, this whole map is painted red.
The countries of Latin America walk together, strain together and the red symbolizes blood but also revolution, that after the tattoo, the blood
is staked in a white fabric, like a flag.
E, dai?
Brazil has been experiencing a political crisis for a long time, which intensified with the Covid-19 pandemic. In January 2019, Jair Messias Bolsonaro was elected, faced with a scenario of political arbitrariness, since then it has been a controversial government that flirts with fascism and necropolitics.
We can consider that the lack of structure and assistance to the most needy, including indigenous people, people living in remote and peripheral areas are more emergent in times of pandemic. In addition to the lack of aid, precarious conditions in the area of health that is a daily occurrence in Brazil, our country also faces a political crisis (in addition to the economic that has been going on since 2014).
During this period, two ministers of health, Luiz Henrique Mandetta and Nelson Teich, the exoneration of both, was specifically due to the direct interference of the president in health strategies against the corona virus, which has no medical or scientific training. Inspired by Trump, Bolsonaro wants to include chloroquine in the official protocol of the SUS (Public Health System) even though medically having several side effects and not having scientific proof of any efficacy in the treatment of the corona virus.
Bolsonaro also referred to the Corona Virus as "little flu" and that people with "athlete backgrounds" were less likely to die from the virus. There was also speculation that the president had contracted the disease, and he, in addition to not publishing his examination, went out on the streets without a mask, inciting the crowd and coughing close to people.
During the pandemic, the minister of justice, Sergio Moro, also resigned, claiming that the president wanted to intervene politically in the investigations of the Federal Police, recalling that allies and the president's family have specifically 6 cases being investigated by the PF, one of them the murder of city councilwoman Marielle Franco.
The name of the performance "E dai?" it is about an interview that Bolsonaro gave, on Tuesday, April 28, when he was asked by a journalist about the deaths in Brazil, which at the time totaled 5,017 deaths, exceeding the total deaths in China, and his answer was: 'And? Am sorry. What do you want me to do? ’, Says Bolsonaro about coronavirus deaths; 'I am Messiah, but I do not do miracles'
Everyone wants to be America
This work presents a piece of feces molded into the silhouette of a globally recognizable cartoon figure. The familiar form, associated with the global reach of American cultural imagery, appears here through a material typically rejected and abject.
The work draws inspiration from Merda d'artista by Piero Manzoni, where human excrement was transformed into a commodity within the art market. In this piece, however, the gesture is redirected toward a critique of cultural and institutional dependency.
The title Everyone Wants to Be America refers to the persistent tendency of Brazil and other Latin American countries to seek validation through imitation of the United States. This dynamic is not limited to politics or popular culture; it also permeates the structures of the art world, where institutions, markets, and curatorial frameworks often reproduce imported models of value and legitimacy.
By shaping an iconic American figure out of waste, the work satirizes both geopolitical admiration and the art market itself. While art is frequently invoked as a potential space for social critique or transformation, the systems that circulate it often remain more invested in prestige, speculation, and alignment with dominant cultural centers.
The piece therefore exposes a double contradiction: the desire to emulate cultural power, and the transformation of political art into another consumable product within the global art market.
Brazilian Rudimentary Politics
This work assembles a set of objects associated with play: a board game titled Impunidade, a word search puzzle, a small fascist figurine, and a coloring book depicting Brazilian fauna and flora. The board game, modeled after real-estate strategy games, replaces property accumulation with references to political scandals, transforming the mechanics of competition into a satirical map of power and corruption.
The installation operates as a commentary on the cyclical nature of impunity within Brazil’s political landscape. The rules of the game mirror a system in which scandals appear, circulate, and dissolve without consequence, turning political crisis into a repetitive sequence of moves.
Alongside this, the coloring book of Brazilian fauna and flora is presented without colored pencils. The images remain as empty outlines, suggesting a landscape that has been progressively exploited and depleted.
Through humor, caricature, and the language of games, the work constructs a portrait of a political environment where accountability is perpetually postponed and complex structural issues are reduced to simplified gestures and recurring spectacles.
The Body State
This project satirizes and takes to absurdism the State's interference in our autonomy over our bodies and sexuality. We use body donation for necrophilia as a posthumous performance, in this narrative the necrophile is the State.
We also touch on subjects such as necrocitizenship, religion, necropolitics and body donation, which, for example, if you go to Law No. 9,434 in art. 4th, he is saying that organ donation depends on family scrutiny to happen, which is independent of individual will and autonomy, and this is our social theater, just like the perverse figure of the necrophile.
We also made a donation document, this donation will probably not be made for obvious reasons, but the performance itself is a discussion that permeates issues of the body, death, violence, sexuality and politics.
In Brazil, the freedom of bodies is constantly restricted by deep-rooted morality. Furthermore, the silence about mortality is reflected in legislation since we do not have any type of guaranteed right over expressly expressed wishes regarding our corpse. The necrocitizen is entirely linked to the wishes of his relatives, and it can be said that, seen as matter, he would then become the property of the family. To the same extent that the permission to donate organs and the donation of the body to science are legislative advances, the need for family screening for these practices to be carried out is a setback.
The work seeks to metaphorize the State in the figure of the necrophile. Both because the State represents a perverse figure, restricting the freedom of bodies (dead or alive) and allowing itself to be influenced by religious fetishism, and because of the responsibility that the State should assume so that the desire of individuals regarding the corpse is fulfilled.
After all, who is the necrophile?
Indi-gestão
In this performance, the artist ingests her own voter registration card. The act transforms a bureaucratic document into organic matter, shifting it from the domain of institutional identity to that of the body.
The title Indi-gestão operates as a double meaning in Portuguese, evoking both “indigestion” and a fractured notion of management or governance. Through this gesture, the work reflects on the uneasy relationship between the individual body and the structures that claim to represent it.
By eating the document that certifies civic participation, the performance collapses the distance between political identity and physical existence. What once functioned as proof of citizenship becomes something to be metabolized, rejected, or absorbed.
The act suggests a political system that is difficult to digest, where participation, representation, and authority circulate in unstable forms between institution and body.
