Odete
On Revelations and Muddy Becomings

The artist Odete is the winner of the first RExFORM – International Performance Project, an initiative born out of a collaboration between maat and BoCA which aims to promote contemporary creation in the field of the performing arts.

Odete takes a critical look at the historical silence surrounding issues of the body, gender identity and queerness. It represents the “culmination of a work on shadows and politics” that the artist has developed since the beginning of her career. The project will be presented at maat on the 9th and 10th of July and at the 2021 BoCA – Biennial of Contemporary Arts.

“I want to present a project that plots against the writing of history in the sense of inscribing certain bodies and practices on it. This inscription is achieved by an untruthful writing on the past, thus revealing the techniques used to produce the truth of that very history that has erased us. This is essentially a paranoid archaeological project.”

The work On Revelations and Muddy Becomings comprises three parts – a magical book, a video game and a performance – and aims to fictionalise a secret society connected to names such as Joan of Arc, Elagabalus and Chevalier d’Eon, from whom the artist claims descent, with the collaboration of the artists Tita Maravilha and Herlander.

Set in a future archive of planet Earth, the play creates and inhabits a fictional land where archaeology is a hindrance, the ancestral body is somatically brought into the present, poems are seen as rituals and ghosts have room to laugh. Amid oils and magical dildos, hermaphrodite goddesses and interplanetary voyages, the performers take care of each other, potentially revealing a community beyond the truths of history. 

The choice was made by a jury comprising Beatrice Leanza, executive director of maat, Catherine Wood, senior curator, international art (performance) at Tate Modern, Chloé Siganos, head of performing arts at Centre Pompidou, and John Romão, artistic director of BoCA.
 

Created by: Odete
Texts and book: Odete
Performers and co-choreographers: Odete, Herlander, Tita Maravilha
Music: Odete and Herlander
Graffiti: DRVGジラ
Costume design: Kahumbi
Stage design: Odete
Lighting design and special effects: Odete
Video game in collaboration with: Mario Mu
Complementary illustrations: Aicy Ray