Artwork 1: “Vontade de Voar” (Desire to Fly), 2026

The first work I selected is Vontade de Voar (“Desire to Fly,” 2026).

This work depicts the Archangel Gabriel, syncretized with a cria, a child of Exu. In his hand, he holds a scale because he is always seeking balance between peace and chaos.

Here, the angel is a demon slayer who learned from the Pombagiras how to kill with a razor. He kills the demons of hunger and poverty. He kills the demon of fear and police violence. He kills the need for other people’s approval of his existence.

This demon slayer is a Black transmasculine person who learned how to play with lions. He no longer dies; he has learned how to fight back.

This divinity has a territory: from the top of the favela hillside.

Artwork 2: “Orí em Confluência” (Orí in Confluence)

While painting this work, I was moved by the need to pursue the truth within our emotions.

I remember an itan of Orunmilá that describes truth as a broken mirror: each fragment holds a part of the whole, but none contains it entirely.

Amid shifts in mood, survival, and the rush of everyday life, feelings are not fixed. They coexist, contradict one another, and transform. 

How many feelings can exist within a single truth?  

Which ones remain hidden in order to sustain the performances we have learned to inhabit?

I think of orí: the orixá that is our head, as a plurality, a sacred space where memories, affection, ancestry, and conflict come together. Feelings are temporary, but they are not disposable. They move through the body, alter our perceptions, and shape our ways of existing.

This work does not present a single truth. Instead, it questions our ability to gather the fragments we carry within our heads and recognize that perhaps it is precisely through fragmentation that truth remains whole.

Artwork 3: “Entre as Frases, Fases e Várias Etapas” (Between Phrases, Phases, and Many Stages)

In this work, I use a verse by Racionais MC’s to enter into conversation with the moon.

In my family, there was a word used to describe our stronger shifts in mood: aluado. It meant that something within us was influenced by the phases of the moon. I have always been aluado.

That saying from my great-grandmother never left my mind. Over time, I began observing myself and others who also seemed to shift with the moon. I also discovered that my family is protected by Tranca-Ruas, a child of the moon.

The moon was my godmother, my muse. When I was born, I was introduced to her with my bottom turned toward her as part of a ritual for good luck. It is a direct connection that has accompanied me from the moment I was born until now.

The moon has always been seen as an element of magic or as a portal. There are bodies that dance with the skies and with the moon; bodies that are not fixed, but made of phases, just as life itself is organic and ever-changing.

Aluado.

For me, it means finding other people who are navigating similar experiences and realizing that what often feels like an individual experience is also part of a larger story—one shared by many who came before us and many who will come after us.

It means having a voice. It means being able to speak from my own experience. For me, it is a space where belonging, exchange, and collective building come together.

That there are many of us. That we are diverse and plural, and that we exist everywhere—from within the favelas and on top of the hills, to the riverbanks, the mountains, and the big cities. Many of us came before, many of us are here now, and many more are still to come.

We want more than just respect for our pronouns. We want the possibility of living well—from healthcare and employment to leisure, safety, and the right to have and build families.

A future of possibility, prosperity, and abundance, where our existence does not have to be defined by survival—where we can exist fully, wholly, and expansively.