Ammodo Docs released the short film Northern Winds about you and your work. How was this experience?

It was quite a surprise. I'm usually behind the camera and preoccupied with activating people who become characters in my films or photographs. Ammodo Docs meant that for the first time I was not in control of the narrative. Instead there was  a filmmaker, Maria Ramos, following my process. This was challenging but really wonderful to see. In Northern Winds we see the first moment where I approach a community. I've never shared this moment before because it really is the beginning of a process. For this work I follow the jangadeiros, or sailors, who operate traditional fishing boats in a town called Maceio, where I was born.

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Can you tell us something about your way of working?

I have a point of departure, which is usually something that intrigues me personally, historically or generationally. This can be an imagination, an idea, a vision, or even a document of the past. In the case of the jangadeiros; I have always had a fascination for the culture of the sea, the persistence of those sailors and their joint movements to put boats in and out of the water. This was my starting point, after which I did a proposition to them to rehearse that same movement of putting the boat in and out of the water over and over again. This helped me to understand how my camera behaves in relation to this mechanism . I like the idea that the camera itself can be a character, getting closer, interacting, playing, as if the camera could have a force, or a soul. So, part of my work is to understand where this ‘soul’ is going. At the same time, I want to create a choreography that intervenes an existing ballet, an existing dance. These bodies or people move or behave like this all the time. But as I said in the Ammodo Doc, even this potentially great material still needs a surreal element. Without that we are just documenting.

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What is this ‘mystical touch’ you look for in your art?

There is a participatory act of creation between the person, the people, or the community I'm depicting and myself as a creator. I can imagine many things, but when people offer me something, they also bring their postures and their body truths. The body tells many stories: of places and of how that body carries their histories. In the case of the jangadeiros, their intimacy with the sea, the gestures that have been passed on from generation to generation. The way they do the knots, the way they carry the sail, the way they carry the boat. So, there is an intimacy that I'm interested in, which is part of this mystical factor I'm trying to find.  I am also looking for the moment where reality becomes more playful, because that’s when it surpasses the documentary and it reveals other things, other truths. It then becomes a third thing, something that is between the imagined and reality. The artwork becomes a negotiation between what is possible and what I imagine, between what I envision and what people offer me.

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You said about your  work The Uprising (2012) that it was only possible with ‘the excuse of doing a film’. Are you trying to change certain narratives?

Sometimes it's not really about changing the story, but the gesture. Sometimes it's making something more exaggerated, like the number of people in the street. Sometimes we can propose a slight change to let the beauty of existence shine. There is so much beauty in, for example those fishermen using an artisanal fishing method or people using horses and chariots as means of transportation. We live in a collapsed world. So, I think these things touch our hearts. The same applies to Sugarcane ABC (2014). It looks like an alphabet, but with the excuse of doing the alphabet we speak of the illiteracy of a group of people, of workers who work in the sugarcane harvest. The language helps us to understand other levels of power relations. I'm interested in this kind of elemental resistance of someone or a community: what can we learn from them? And how we can be hypnotised by them because it's completely hypnotic to me.

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A lot of your work is playful and with a sense of humour but also addresses serious topics and themes. How do you navigate between the two?

I like the idea of finding some freshness in heavy issues, to discover poetry or beauty while addressing issues like illiteracy, poverty, exploitation and postcolonialism. At the same time, it’s very hard to approach those topics and the people involved a way that is not denouncing. I am not from their context, but I am the one building the image, so this is very delicate as well. I can't be naïve, I can’t beautify poverty. I really think a lot about how to be, how to approach, how to depict, but be respectful and how to build together. How to be respectful but also be firm in the message? Be open, but still be clear. How can I play with this ambiguity? It has to be light, but I can’t romanticise it, but at the same time I think it’s beautiful. It has to be serious, but still touching. It’s a very difficult balance.

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That is a serious responsibility.

I think art comes with a lot of responsibility and throughout the years it became very clear to me that we, as artists, become representatives of our culture. During my lifetime I have a chance to create these documents of the present and of the future. They operate in the present, they operate in the past, they operate in the future. I have to negotiate with people and play with them and listen to them and think of the images that I'm making. What will be the impact on them? On the culture, on my work, on my message. This really requires a lot of energy from me,  but it's a very beautiful process of growing up and understanding what moves me and transforming my own concerns into action, into aesthetical action, into poetical action. And also, why not, political action.

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You mentioned the role of ‘doubt’ before. What role does it play in your work?

Of course, it depends on the project. With every work there were moments of doubt. Doubt cannot be underestimated because it is the potential of plurality, doubt can lead to anything. It's the mystery. It's an invitation to keep investigating a little bit more it. So, I do have a lot of respect for doubt.

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Does doubt ever lead to insecurity?

Absolutely, but it's a matter of understanding that insecurity is part of the process. Trying to understand insecurity more in the sense of openness; of leaving things still open at certain points and waiting for the right moment, when things are clearer.  For example, Sugarcane ABC really presented itself to me. I saw a magazine from the 1950s about the sugar economy with a typography in it on a background of sugar cane. I understood immediately: I have to do this with real people. It was very clear to me I had to ask people who currently work at a sugar plant to ‘be’ the letters. On the other hand, for the horse race the process lasted for years. I was fascinated by them, but I didn't know if I had to do one horse race with one chariot and one horse rider or multiple races? It took me years to understand that it was about the collectiveness. With The Fish (2016) the idea came to me very clearly, almost as a vision, but it took me years to understand how to go about it practically. So, it really depends.

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I was told that your exhibition in Foam in 2022 was an important step towards the Venice Biennal. How so?

My exhibition in Foam was super important because I pushed my experimentation with cardboard further. I was challenged to respond to the Dutch colonial period in Pernambuco in Recife. I did research into a group of women who for thirty years have been performing a story about a colonial battle in which women defeated the Dutch soldiers back in the 17th century. It was a very particular and strong story, and this installation became really powerful and meaningful to me because I learnt that objects can also be great storytellers in addition to getting more confident in working with cardboard. In the same year I was doing Tejucupapo Heroines Theater, the project in FOAM, I was preparing With the heart coming out of the mouth for the Venice Biennale, where I also worked with large-scale cardboard prints of objects. It helped me experiment and prepare a lot.

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How did the Venice Biennale impact you?

Venice is a very important moment for anyone’s career as an artist. Moreover, representing Brazil in the Bolsonaro period was especially challenging. Brazil was at  a peak of political tension with extreme inequality going on, human rights were being pushed back and the situation on the streets was really heavy, with homelessness and social inequality of all kinds. The indigenous genocide had reached a peak of outrageous attacks. And this was the moment where I was invited to represent Brazil in Venice. The works at the biennale were about the impossibility of speaking, of indescribable  feelings and situations. In Brazil we recur to exaggerations or expressions that relate to the body. I liked the idea that our language recurs to the body when speaking about the absurdity of life. It touches ambiguity. So, it was a very remarkable participation for me, and I am still trying to assimilate what it means. I would say there is definitely a ‘before Venice’ and an ‘after Venice’.

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Where do you find inspiration?

Wow, that’s a very difficult question because I'm inspired by so many different things: by music, by people, by the way books are designed, how architecture operates in space and how our bodies occupy that space. How language is manifested into letters and how these letters play with space, with a blank page. I love cinema. Cinema is beautiful. I really like that nowadays the contemporary art field combines a little bit of everything. And I think that is what makes me an artist, because I'm not confined to one field. I’m not a complete filmmaker and I'm not a complete photographer. I play with photography, history-making, design, graphic design, filmmaking and more. Everything together is what makes me the artist that I am.

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Published on 22 May 2025.

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Photos: Sander Coers