Topographies of Violence

We inhabit a cartography etched by the repetition of structural violence, violence that shapes flesh, subjectivity, and geography. The queer and dissident body, racialized, deviated, pathologized, becomes a palimpsest where power inscribes its norms and, simultaneously, where insurgencies are rewritten. It is a body that defies architectures of control: performing outside cisheteronormativity, beyond capitalist productivity, and outside the binary epistemologies of Western science.

A stage where the protocols of pain and the noise of oppression are aestheticized as denunciation and political gesture. Within this terrain of collapse, BDSM operates as a symbolic machine: a performative language, a dramatization of consent and power, capable of distorting the lines between domination and desire, violence and care, system and failure.

By engaging BDSM as a critical aesthetic, this project seeks to map the topographies of violence, where the body is marked, exposed, displaced, but also where it resists, reacts, and rebuilds itself. The restraints become diagrams of biopolitical control, yet also choreographies of possible freedom. Consensual pain stands in contrast to imposed pain. Performance becomes a sensitive cartography of a fractured world.

This is an expanded reflection on mechanisms of normalization, surveillance, and exclusion imposed upon nonconforming bodies, and how those bodies, when turned into art, language, ritual, and fiction, sabotage the very systems that seek to discipline them. It is about occupying space with bodies that refuse obedience, that overflow gender, language, and function.

A woman with black hair and bangs sitting on the floor in a grime-filled room, with her legs spread apart. She is topless, covering her nipples with pasties, and holding a large, red, broken lobster shell. The room has various electrical equipment, wires, and machinery, and an unkempt, industrial appearance.

Three photographs of marble surfaces with red stains, with the middle photo having small black text that reads 'suite of 10' and a red stain dripping from the bottom.

An old typewriter with a red cloth or piece of fabric draped behind it, and the typewriter is damaged and missing parts, placed next to a box of empty typewriter ribbon spools and a small mechanical device on a white surface with bloodstains.

A child dressed in a dress wears a gas mask and holds a bouquet of flowers in a cluttered and gritty workshop or industrial space.

A young child wearing a gas mask, holding a bouquet of flowers, standing in an industrial or workshop space with a cluttered background.

A woman with long dark hair and tattoos on her arm is placing a gas mask on a young girl who is holding a bouquet of flowers. The scene appears to be in a rustic or industrial setting.

Girl with the Gas Mask

When I was around five years old, I began to have recurring visions of a family wearing gas masks. This image would appear specifically whenever I looked toward my family’s house down the hallway. The vision of the gas mask family always seemed to coincide with moments when bad things were happening in my life. Because of this, I came to associate that image with deeply negative feelings. Experiencing these visions was painful, and I often had nightmares about this gas mask family — they robbed me of peace of mind.

When I was 23, I decided to transform this haunting image into a staged photograph. After finding the models for the shoot, there was no doubt in my mind that I would give them a happy ending. I had lived for too long with the suffocating presence of this heavy-masked family and all the sorrow attached to them. The turning point came when I created and photographed The Gas Mask Girl (2012) — the image shown above. In photographing the girl wearing the gas mask, I borrowed her presence to help me process and purge the emotional weight carried by those visions.

The experience was liberating. It felt as though I had finally removed the filter of my own imaginary gas mask and could breathe freely. I allowed myself to be “contaminated” by this staged girl — and through her, I stepped into a new phase of life, even though the chaos around me remained. That photograph definitively freed me from the ghostly visions of the gas mask family.

I believe that transforming my vision into an object — in this case, a photograph — enabled me to reprocess my past experience and the pain attached to it. Eloa, the girl who posed for the image, became a mirror of myself: she was about the same age I had been when the visions first began. I wanted Eloa to know how important she was in my life, because she offered her presence and seriousness so that together, we could complete this act of catharsis.

Two women, one with long curly hair and the other with long straight hair, are in a workshop or factory setting. The woman with curly hair is holding a bouquet of flowers and is wearing a dress. The woman with straight hair is helping her put on a mask. In the background, a person is sitting on the ground with a hose and appears to be working.

Two black harnesses with adjustable straps and metal buckles hanging against a white background.

Two black leather harnesses with straps and metal rings, shown against a plain white background.

The Painter

This is the issue of gender in art (art market and history), specifically the predominance of cisgender men. Based, for example, on the work “The advantages of being a female artist (1988/2017)” by Guerrila Girls, which exhibited at MASP in 2017 and addresses the contrast between the small number of female, non-binary, trans, and queer artists, compared to the large number of nude female bodies in the exhibition of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York (5% and 85% in 1989, 4% and 76% in 2012) and at MASP (6% and 60% in 2017). In the performance, the constant and repetitive act evokes a sexual act in its phallocentric form, symbolizing the persistent cultural dominance of cisgender men in the art world — both historically and within the market. The screen represents the feminine, the queer, and the non-binary; its whiteness suggests an attempted erasure of these identities. The act of tearing through the screen becomes a gesture of ongoing violation, a metaphor for how these bodies and narratives are repeatedly invaded, silenced, or overwritten.

A woman in black clothing and gloves holding a large gardening trowel with a container of a white substance, against a black background.

Close-up of a person wearing black shorts and a black top, sitting on a surface, with one hand resting on their thigh, shot in a minimalistic setting with shadows.

A person wearing black shorts and a long-sleeved black shirt is leaning on a white table or surface.

Person wearing black gloves holding a paintbrush, leaning over a wooden easel or palette on a black background, with visible tattoos on their arm.

A woman with tattoos, wearing black gloves and a black top, holding a wooden chair in a dark setting.

A person with long curly hair, wearing a black long-sleeve top, is sitting and touching a white block, with their lower body exposed, showing a tattoo on their right thigh.

Close-up of a person’s side with tattoos, holding an easel with a canvas, working on a painting, against a black background.

A sculpture of a woman with long hair, covering her face with hands, and a red cloth hanging from the sculpture's waist to the floor.

Corpo Estranho

Corpo Estranho” in english Weird Body, was a performance made in 2012 about : sexuality - specifically sexual abuse - queer theory and erasure of the body both in the social and cultural spheres, specifically mentioning walkers and sexual professionals for their personal experience with these two media.
The name “Corpo Estranho” was inspired by the book “A weird body: essays on sexuality and queer theory” by Guacira Lopes Louro

A collage of four images of a person lying on a white bed, with their head covered in red paint or blood.

A woman with short dark hair, sitting on the floor in a gritty industrial environment, with her legs spread apart and holding a knife in her right hand. She is topless, with tattoos on her chest, and has a serious expression. There is a large, partially sliced fruit on her lap, with a glowing, fiery appearance, and broccoli and other vegetables scattered around her on the floor. The background includes industrial machinery and wires, creating a dark, ominous atmosphere.

Upside-down close-up of a person with jewelry, holding two large reddish objects near their face, with dark glossy eyes and a contemplative expression.

A person with a purple jacket and dark hair in a bun looks at a painting in a gallery.

Gula

‍“Gula” talk about the fetishism of commodity, based in Karl Marx’s critique of the social and psychological phenomenon in which goods appear to have an independent will of its producers. The BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism) aesthetic alludes to two products (girl and watermelon) and their measures, guiding properties that affect their usefulness and values that is based only on the currency and the third object which denominates the social relationship between the whole, hunger. Self-consuming, self-abort and swallow, the ideologies that the system imposes on us and so develop one of the capital sins, Gula, as we consume something that we need and are playing a part in a social theater. The photo was inspired by Saudek and the performer is Miss Tibia. Gula participated in several exhibitions such as “Trabalhadores do Cú” at Espaço Cultural Maus Hábitos in Portugal in 2016, Scope Art Fair in Miami in 2014, in addition to being part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bogotá, he has also participated in several exhibitions at the Museum like Medusa Mujer, Political Bodies, ABRAHADABRA. It has also been published in Digital Photographer magazine.

Rose Compass

A metaphor for the contemporary subject.
We live orienting ourselves between possible directions, in a fragmented world where the center has shifted (as in Deleuze and Guattari — rhizome and deterritorialization).
The compass rose gives us the illusion of a stable center, but it is a symbolic construction. The true movement of being perhaps lies in decentering, in navigating without a fixed map. The compass rose would then be a device of comfort in the face of the abyss.

Performance with shibari.
Shibari - Foraisso
Photographic records and filming: Ludimilla Russo

Close-up of a person's thigh with tattoos, tied with rope.

A person in athletic wear practicing aerial silks inside a gym with large windows exposing a cityscape of high-rise buildings.

Person performing a headstand in a yoga pose on the floor, with their hair hanging downward and their hands supporting their head.

A person is tied with rope around their body and arms, with a tattoo visible on their shoulder, sitting near a window with blinds.

Black and white photo of a woman with long hair looking down, with a tattoo on her arm and shoulder, standing in front of a window.

A woman hanging upside down from a swinging rope, with her eyes closed, in a room with a plain wall and some fabric on the floor.

A woman in fishnet lingerie hanging upside down from a trapeze in a room with a wooden floor, with clothes and fabric on the floor.

Black and white photo of a woman with tattoos, wearing a sheer top, tied with a knot around her waist, with long hair, looking downward.

A woman in a fishnet outfit hanging upside down on aerial silks in a gym or studio.

A man and a woman practicing acrobatics in a room with large windows, with the man holding the woman upside down in a pose.

A woman practicing aerial yoga or hammocking, hanging upside down with her body extended horizontally, inside a room with large windows showing a cityscape in the background.