5 Queer Brazilian Artists on Identity, Censorship, and Survival - I-D

5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D

CULTURE 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival

Benoit Loiseau APR 25 2018, 11:52AM

As Brazil's creative scene continues to be bullied by conservative political groups, i-D spoke to ﬁve LGBTQ artists ﬁghting for change.

Rosa Luz, self-portrait

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As the general elections loom, Brazil is facing unprecedented pressure from conservative and evangelical groups, reinforcing a violent wave of racism, homophobia, and transphobia. The artistic community is no exception, with a number of exhibitions and manifestations recently being the subject of censorship and attacks.

Last September, the queer art exhibition Queermuseu was abruptly shut down a month before schedule, following a campaign by right-wing protestors. The show, displayed at the Santander Bank’s cultural centre in Porto Alegre, featured over 260 works from well-known Brazilian

https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 1/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D artists, including the late Lygia Clark as well as more emerging ones like Daniel Lie and Cibelle Cavalli Bastos.

Weeks later, another controversy erupted after a video of a performance by the Brazilian choreographer Wagner Schwartz went viral on social media. In the footage, Schwartz is seen lying still and completely naked on the ﬂoor during an opening at São Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art, while the audience — including a 4-year-old girl, accompanied by her mother — is invited to interact with his body. In both instances, right-wingers and evangelists accused the work of promoting pedophilia, blasphemy, and bestiality, and curators were summoned to an inquiry in the Brazilian senate.

“We’re facing a rise of conservative and obscure politics,” the Brazilian curator and art critic Paula Alzugaray tells us over a cup of strong espresso at SP-Arte, the country’s premier art fair, where she was chairing a panel on gender politics. “That’s why I think the work of these artists is so important.” The fair opened only days after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president and leftist front-runner, was sentenced to jail for alleged corruption (an arrest identiﬁed as a coup by many of his supporters).

Unsurprisingly, queer artists and activists across the country are ﬁghting back. The Queermuseu will be remounted in June at Parque Lage in Rio, following a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign which raised over $200,000 USD (funds will be used to produce the exhibition as well as educational programs). Meanwhile, artistic and grassroots initiatives continue to develop with increased fervour and visibility.

We spoke to some of the leading voices behind the movement about diversity, freedom of speech, and resistance. Here’s what they have to say.

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Photography Felipe Augusto

Rosa Luz: artist, musician, YouTuber, and trans activist “It’s very hard to be LGBTQ in Brazil. There’s a lot of prejudice about our bodies, and how we should behave. Brazil has the highest transgender homicide rate in the world. We don’t have enough spaces to express ourselves, and in order to have these spaces we have to ﬁght; it’s not easy. A lot of the time, we just lose the strength to ﬁght. About 90% of trans women and travestis [person assigned male at birth who has a feminine, transfeminine, or “femme” gender identity] in Brazil are in prostitution right now. There are no other options. Once I disclose that I’m transgender, I can’t get any work. For me, my YouTube channel was the last option before prostitution, and it’s working, but I’m an exception. Politicians don’t represent my community: they don’t represent black, trans people from the ghetto. I don’t believe in them, and I don’t think anything will change. I’d like a black president. A black, female president.” @rosadobarraco

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Photography Juan Palma Dias

https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 5/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D Ariel Nobre: artist, trans activist, and diversity consultant “I feel that we’re living a war. The conservatives are trying to recreate the environment of the 70s and 80s, during the dictatorship. But it’s another society now, and they don’t realise that. The elite doesn’t accept that black people are in universities, that transgender artists are in museums, that the poor have more access. They can’t accept that we can speak for ourselves. I have my own consulting company, and I work with powerful people. We’ve had some victories, in different ﬁelds. Two months ago, the Supreme Court ruled that transgender people can now be recognised according to their self-determined gender, without the need for surgery. It’s amazing, and we’ve fought for this, but there are many other civil rights we still have to ﬁght for.” @projetoprecisodizerqueteamo

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Photography Pedro Guilherme Ferreira

Cibelle Cavalli Bastos: artist and theorist "The nub of the problem is the toxic masculinity in everyone’s socialization and it being upheld by the patriarchal system, which the conservatives fear they will lose. That toxic masculinity https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 7/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D carries a lot of violence, because of a lack of emotional ability to deal with change, or anything that would be against all of their current knowns. As we [the queer, feminist community] progress, the right wing is getting really fucking desperate, because everything that they know as stable is going, and they’re blaming us. They're taking extreme measures to keep their privileges in place, even if it’s to their own detriment and to that of the planet. We have a saying here in Brazil: Não passarão — ‘they shall not pass.’ I’m done with racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, classist cis men in power, living and acting without checking themselves. It’s fucked up. We can’t accept this anymore, and I think a lot of artists feel the same way, otherwise we wouldn’t be making the work that we make." @aevtarperform

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Photography Tiago Cadete

Daniel Lie: artist “We’ve always lived in a kind of Dystopia. Brazil, a country that was originated with the

https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 9/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D genocide of indigenous people by european colonizers, mistreats female bodies with machismo, enslaved African populations, and was the last country to abolish slavery (over 50% of Brazil population is black). It’s a deeply patriarchal, colonised society, so it’s not surprising to me that, by extension, Brazil has the highest transgender homicide rate. For artists, to propose anything outside of the cultural norms and outside of artistic standards, is always a risk. We’ve been seeing an increase in fascist attitudes, and art being attacked feels like a backlash of the dictatorial period, which until 1985 generated a lot of violence with loads of censorship. But to be unapologetic about our queer existence and to believe in the power of imagination to create alternative realities, is like our scream for freedom.” @dacostalie

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https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 11/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D Coletivo MEXA: queer and social activism group “We feel angry, but we can’t get out of here. We want to fully experience the here and now - not because we have hopes - but because the only thing that seems possible right now is to stick together. In this Brazilian eternal ‘imperfect future,’ discrimination and violence don’t stand by a [speciﬁc] political party. All rights can be rafﬂed in the name of governability. To the right and to the left. Things explode as controversies, but the political structures are almost always the same. We live the fragility of this moment and want to propose research initiatives towards understanding our power within this fragility." @coletivoMEXA

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tagged: art, brazil, features, gender, queer, lgbtq, queermuseu

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NEWS charli xcx and cardi b have recorded the 2018 'lady marmalade'

The song will be the sequel to 'Boys.'

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André-Naquian Wheeler MAY 4 2018, 4:15PM

Screenshot via YouTube

https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 13/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D Charli XCX’s Pop 2 elevated the concept of collaborating in pop music to a new level. The experimental, trend-setting mixtape featured queer and feminist icons like Mykki Blanco, Kim Petras, and Cupcakke on distorted, techno-leaning tracks. And lets not forget when she paid a radically soft, all-inclusive ode to boys with the banger titled, well, “Boys.” Six months later and Charlie is back at it. The singer has teased a pop trifecta called “Girls” that will include Cardi B, Rita Ora, and Bebe Rexha. Hear that? It’s the collective squeals of joy from gay men around the world. We immediately get “Lady Marmalade 2.0” vibes from the lineup.

The moment is sure to be seminal because, sadly, it’s rare to see female equals in music work together, perhaps because they can rarely do so without getting pitted against each other. The most recent example of this is the slew of gossip about a “feud” cropping up around Cardi B and Nicki Minaj after their “Motorsport” collab, to the point that a feud was created because of the incessant questions. It was almost like a case of “pop self-manifestation.”

Charli XCX on the other hand has been all about dishing out empowering female positivity. She has a long list of feminist collabs, including Tinashe, Tove Lo, and Sophie (just to name a few). She also showed love to Dua Lipa during a recent performance and provided some background vocals. Now this is what we call solidarity. There’s sure be to nothing but good vibes and hair-ﬂipping in “Girls,” proving to the world that yes, female pop stars can get along.

In case you need a refresher — or something to hold you over — watch the pink-ﬁlled predecessor to “Girls” below:

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tagged: rita ora, charlie xcx, cardi b

NEWS these new 'black panther' deleted scenes give a lot of fresh insight

NEWS watch nicki minaj's controversial banger vids for 'chun li' and 'barbie tingz'

NEWS listen to 'bloom,' troye sivan's queer anthem about bottoming

NEWS charli xcx and cardi b have recorded the 2018 'lady marmalade'

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CULTURE alia shawkat wrote a masterpiece about two women having sex all the time

Sarah Gooding MAY 4 2018, 3:36PM

We sat down with 'Duck Butter' stars Alia Shawkat and Laia Costa to ﬁnd out how they accidentally made a NSFW feminist masterpiece.

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Male critics don’t understand Duck Butter, but Alia Shawkat is fine with that. The co-writer and co-star of the film, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and is in select theaters now, says she isn’t surprised that all the less-favorable reviews of the film seem to be written by men. “It’s kind of a score, in a weird way. Like, yeah! Men don’t get it! That’s fine with me!” she laughs. Laia Costa, her co-star, who’s curled up in a worn armchair next to her in the lobby of a Tribeca hotel, just rolls her eyes.

In any case, it’s not a man’s movie to understand, although it was directed by one – Miguel Arteta (who also co-wrote the script). Duck Butter is a modern experimental romance about two women who meet at a bar and instantly hit it off and, after going home together, decide to spend the next 24 hours together, in an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of regular dating. And to make it more fun, they make a pact to have sex every hour.

Alia – who’s been expanding her repertoire since starring as Maeby Fünke on the long-running comedy series Arrested Development, which returns for its ﬁfth season this year – was awarded Best Actress in a US Narrative Feature at Tribeca Film Festival for her role in the ﬁlm as Naima, her pragmatic counterpart to Laia’s lustful Sergio.

Maybe the men who criticized the ﬁlm feel threatened because they’re being replaced? Sergio was originally supposed to be played by a man, but Alia says they couldn’t ﬁnd one who could pull it off. “We met with a lot of male actors and it just wasn’t really clicking. A lot of the guys we met seemed off-put and uncomfortable – no one was jazzed about being like, ‘Yes! I’m going to throw myself in and share a story about intimacy, and what it means to almost over-expose yourself to somebody!’ Whereas Laia responded very differently, she understood it right away.”

Surprisingly, changing one of the central characters’ genders didn’t require any edits to the script. “It actually cleaned up a lot of the issues we had had as screenwriters,” Alia says. “Not wanting to see a penis on camera as much, worrying about how many times a guy can come – all of these things that were distracting from the story, but would have had to be a part of it if it was a guy.” https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 17/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D ADVERTISEMENT

And featuring two women as opposed to a man and a woman allowed them to avoid it becoming another “‘men and women are different” story, Alia says. “We didn’t want that at all. So it actually solved a lot of our problems.”

They shot the bulk of the ﬁlm – the 24-hour romance sequence – in near-real time, in one 27- hour shoot. So the two characters’ unravelling as they spiral into exhaustion is real. Alia says, “It was intense, in a very fun way though. The energy levels we had were all genuine, so as we were feeling them they guided the tone of the scene, instead of usually the other way around, where you’re consciously choosing the energy you want to have for a scene.”

This authenticity also comes through in the characters’ conversations, which span everything from how they ﬁrst masturbated, to their dsyfunctional relationships with their mothers, to their negative sexual experiences with men. In watching that last scene, it’s hard not to recall the recent allegations of sexual abuse against prominent men in Hollywood. Alia says that all happened after the ﬁlm was made, so it didn’t inform it. “But it’s interesting how work happens sometimes, where all of a sudden it comes out and you’re like ‘oh, it’s more relevant now.’ Like the way that Naima talks about the world ending, and the news – that was before the election.”

Viewers will likely relate to Naima’s doomsday mentality and inability to escape the unending negative news cycle. Early on, Sergio physically drags Naima away from a conversation with three baby boomers, who she’s blaming for ruining the planet. That’s not the only jab the ﬁlm takes at older generations – later, Sergio’s mom brags to Naima about her sexual adventures with an air of superiority. The scene is like a sexy wink – little do they know what freaky stuff we’re getting up to! Sex every hour affords many opportunities for experimentation.

But Naima and Sergio don’t just fuck. Their romantic moments are so sweet they border on saccharine, however they’re executed with such tenderness and attention to detail that it’s moving. Both the actors and their characters had immediate chemistry upon meeting – Laia and Alia are now close friends, which is unsurprising considering what they went through to make the ﬁlm.

Laia says their improvisations on the script added to the natural feel of the characters’ blossoming romance. “We were talking about a lot of stuff that was helping us to make it https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 18/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D deeper, and you can see that in various small details, I think,” she says in her animated Spanish accent. “You can see that in Naima’s tears, and how they look at that in the mirror, and suddenly you realize it’s maybe more important to her than we thought.”

Duck Butter shows tenderness well, considering it was birthed from the idea of exploring how we expose “gross” things in relationships, both mentally and physically. In the titular scene, Naima tells Sergio about a man who went down on her and was disgusted by her “duck butter”, and then refused to have sex with her. In her reaction, Sergio turns the subject matter into a symbol of empowerment rather than embarrassment, and the scene feels like a powerful reclamation of Naima’s sexuality. It makes sense that the writers would want to name the ﬁlm after this.

Alia says, “We always thought the name was great, but that people would be weirded out by it. And then we were like no, it has to be that name, because it represents all the gross shit that you show to each other – either you accept it or not.”

Her choice of words is apt, as Sergio has a penchant for attacking people with actual shit. Laia says this isn’t the ﬁrst time she’s played a character that goes to the bathroom a lot, recalling her award-winning role in the 2015 drama Victoria. “It’s so funny – in this movie, I poop a lot, and in the other movie I pee a lot. Like I pee ﬁve times on screen!” She and Alia dissolve into loud laughter. “Laia Costa: brilliant actress! She’ll poop and pee, anywhere!” Alia announces.

Their persistent poop jokes prick the ears of a woman sitting behind them, who’s turned her head to listen to our conversation. Laia notices, and turns in her chair to ask the woman, “Are you listening to us?” The woman replies quickly, “No, I’m not. I mean, it’s hard not to see who’s talking about pooping a lot.” Everyone laughs, and Laia turns back to our conversation and says: “I think it’s a funny thing, everyone gets so excited about it, you know? ‘Oh, poop and pee!’” The woman turns again and asks what their movie is. “ Duck Butter?” she asks. “Now I understand the movie. I’ll let you do your thing.” Alia shakes her head, mumbling, “Whatever draws you to the movie.”

Unfortunately, it’s still rare to see two women star in a rom-com. Alia blames “the patriarchy in general”, but says “it’s deﬁnitely changing. Because women are deciding that their stories are valuable, and the truth is we’re the only ones that have to know that.” She hopes that “younger

https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg7gv/queer-brazilian-artists-censorship-politics 19/21 5/7/2018 5 queer brazilian artists on identity, censorship, and survival - i-D queer audiences and younger women” will see Duck Butter. “Obviously the ﬁlm could be for anybody, but I do feel like it will relate to them more.”

“But fuck those male critics.”

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tagged: interview, lgbtq, alia shawkat, tribeca

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