FIRST EPISODE: «Queerness, Performativity, Pluriversity »
For the initial episode of this series we invited Léa Meier (Switzerland) and Explode! Platform (Brazil) – represented by Cláudio Bueno and João Simões. The artists share their recent practices, major concerns and affinities while discussing the contextual differences between Switzerland and Brazil. Their encounter touches on issues of performativity, difference, self-care and freedom.
Artists bios
Léa Meier (1989) lives and works in Switzerland. Léa Meier is an artist exploring the notions of dirtiness, desire, body and failure through performance, textile, text and drawing. She uses sexual energy as a fount of creativity, in order to create spaces and atmospheres propitious to intimate, feminist and political speeches. She made her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Bern (2012) and her Master of Fine Arts in Contemporary Artistic Practices at the University of Arts in Geneva (2015). In the past years, she created various performances in Switzerland; Les Mauvais Jours Finiront! (Les Urbaines Festival, Theater Arsenic), Lipstick Big Enough (Les Urbaines Festival), Ma maison est une maison sale (Theater Arsenic). In 2018, her first solo show was presented at Riverside, an independent art space in Switzerland. Léa has been also invited to participate to the residencies Watch and Talk during the theater festivals far° and Programme Commun (2016), Arc artistic residency (2017) and FAAP in São Paulo (2018).
Explode! is a platform that operates in the fields of art and culture, also approaching pedagogy and social justice. It fosters and develops research and experimentation around practices that discuss the body and its intersections of class, race, gender, sexuality and its non-normative possibilities. Led by artists, researchers and curators Cláudio Bueno and João Simões, it is organized in the midst of a national and international network of collaborators. It organizes presentations and immersive meetings in different spaces and formats that emphasize coexistence, listening, debate and experimentation. It seeks to broaden the sense of artistic practice, of culture, of learning spaces, and, consequently, of how we will be able to imagine other ways of life less violent, freer and more diverse. http://explode.life
Cláudio Bueno (1983, São Paulo, SP) is an artist, researcher and curator. He participates in national and international exhibitions, residencies and awards. He has spoken in universities and cultural spaces such as: Whitechapel Gallery (United Kingdom), Humboldt-Universität (Germany), CUNY (USA), University of Cape Town (South Africa), FAAP (Brazil), among others. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts from ECA-USP. Integrates O Grupo Inteiro, dedicated to artistic practices, with which he participated in exhibitions at MAM-SP; MASP; Sesc SP; 33rd Bienal de Artes de São Paulo – in collaboration with the artist Jorge Menna Barreto; far°/Pro Helvetia (Switzerland); Casa do Povo; among others. Together with Tainá Azeredo he realizes the Interval-School, which researches and experiences ways of learning from the field of art. with João Simões, he develops, the Explode! Platform, which researches and promotes artistic and cultural practices with emphasis on the intersections of social class, race, gender and sexuality. Part of his current research focuses on global technological infrastructures and their ways of operating alongside the dynamics of life and earth. More information at: http://buenozdiaz.net
João Simões (1979, Rio de Janeiro, RJ) is an artist, curator, researcher and educator. He develops, with Cláudio Bueno, the Explode! platform that researches and promotes artistic and cultural practices with emphasis on the intersections of social class, race, gender and sexuality. He is a member of the Extremidades Research Group/PUC-SP. He has participated in curatorships, public speeches and performances in several cultural institutions such as CUNY, Sesc-SP, CCBB-SP, Paço das Artes, MASP, PUC-SP, among others. He presented the performance Vera Verão, in collaboration with the artist Aretha Sadick in the exhibition “Agora somos todxs negrxs?” at Videobrasil (2017), and Arte Veículo at Sesc Pompeia (2018) and Sesc Santos (2019). In 2019, he mentored the ICA-Capetown Live Arts Workshop, through Pro Helvetia’s COINCIDENCIA programme. He is currently part of the “How free are the arts?” residency programme of the Goethe-Institut, between Brazil and Nigeria.
