A Working Portfolio
Documenting a few works from the last three years
Cosmic Studio. Casein and oil on unprimed cotton canvas. 78X60 inches, 2025.
This work presents a blueprint for my studio practice and continuation of my work in the coming years. I started making it during my Open Studio Practice at the Soil Factory and finished it in my home studio with Helena and Ulysses. It currently hangs in our dining room.
Pyrocolengos (2024-26) are wearable paintings designed for use by more than one person. These works draw inspiration from Parangolés by Helio Oiticica, inviting people to dance and incorporate the artwork. "Pyrocolengos" refers to the fire ignited in the body for dancing and the revolutionary power of dance to initiate social movement (pyro); through toghetherness (co); positioning the vitality of the body as a possible common language between people (lengos). I started making Pyrocolengos collectively in 2024 and have used them in a lecture at Cornell University in 2025.
Emocional - No Birth and No Death, 10X8 inches, gesso and oil on velvet, 2026.
A series of paintings on the velvet used in my latest Pyrocolengo, done at Cornell University. These paintings reflect a student's expression of himself as "emocional" (emotional in Portuguese) and his desire never to stop being that way. His sensibility and deep awareness brought me a new perception of emotions, which I linked to the heightened awareness in mindfulness Buddhist meditations of reaching a state of no birth and no death. The paintings seek to continue developing a visual vocabulary that merges texture and symbol formation.
The Real Exists, casein and acrylic on cotton canvas, 24X20 inches, 2026.
I have a growing body of paintings, which I am finalizing on canvases initiated during Open Studio Practice, a free program I held for several months for children and caregivers at the Soil Factory.
Untitled, oil and casein on unprimed cotton, acrylic on primed canvas, and cotton t-shirt. 11 X 14 inches, 2025.
Play Propagate was a social art project held at the gardens of the Soil Factory. Throughout three periods in Fall 2024, Spring 2025, and Summer 2025, we had weekly three-hour meetings with mothers and their children. These meetings included planting two garden plots with food to be harvested and distributed between our immediate communities. I conducted drawing experiences in the garden and collective painting sessions. We also remembered plays we had done in the past to teach to our children and created monthly art shows featuring our artworks and children's presentations.
In Food For The Spirit, I wrap myself on a large canvas and ask people to paint on it while I stay inside, as if in a cocoon. I move as I wish to, keeping myself always covered, and people paint as they can. At the end, we open the canvas to see what was painted on it. I created Food For The Spirit as a reference to Adrian Piper’s work, and as a way to think and experience a different kind of mirroring. The work has a play-based thinking, more than a ritualistic one, although being wrapped in the canvas, experiencing the creative acts of others, and coming out of it felt like a rebirth.
Winter Flowers. With Your Kiss My Life Begins, Casein and Oil on unprimed cotton canvas. 60 X 36 inches. (one in a series of three).
"Creative Thursdays" was a six-week art project I offered for free at The Soil Factory to create community around art-making. The project mirrored the "Domingos da Criação," organized by museum director Frederico Morais in 1971 at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. While Morais focused on materials to structure each encounter, I focused each encounter on the work of one artist that would help us center our bodies in practice, such as Ana Mendietta, Lygia Pape, and Laura Aguilar. A text reflecting on the artwork can be found here.
The Power of Creation was a series of drawings I made with my daughter when she was two years old, which I later transformed into a collection of 12 digital prints. The collection sold out through my website while I was running an online art studio
I co-produced with artist Sarah Arriagada and interviewed 50 artists for the podcast Artist Praxis, proposing to discuss the creative process behind one recent artwork. The podcast became an excellent resource for people to hear how artists organize their feelings and thoughts in art-making. The podcast gave me insight into how one uses language to communicate about the space between experience and object. More importantly, it fostered new connections and professional relationships between artists from different countries and practices.