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PERFORMANCE - EXPERIMENT
MULHERMÁQUINA is a 40-minute audiovisual performance-experiment that weaves together themes drawn from the artist’s own life story and her path as a woman, a mother, and an artist. This has been the route she has taken to poetically process subjects that have marked her in recent years: menopause, exhaustion, anxiety, dysfunction, everyday automatisms, overload, motherhood, aging, health, self-image, sexuality… It is a way of fabulating, of inventing possibilities, of playing with autofiction and autobiography, of deepening her cross-disciplinary research, of making music out of ordinary things, of looking at what surrounds her and seeing beyond. A way of touching things and being touched by them, transforming her anxieties into a unique artistic experience. A game of repetition.
"I propose working with the image of the woman-machine, used here as an allegory to reflect on a certain mechanical mode of operating in contemporary life. Formed within a neoliberal context and forged inside capitalism, I appropriate this “Woman-Machine” to give body to her history, seeking to artistically investigate new unfoldings through the body, image, sound, and stage presence.
I aim to access cracks, failures, fragile points — subverting the machine, deprogramming it, and provoking a short circuit that might ultimately generate a process of regeneration."
DRAMATURGY
The performance unfolds in three acts, like a circuit the character travels through.
In the first act, she transforms her breath into a motor, layering sounds and voices, creating an industrial soundscape built from organic sounds that gradually become a choir of ancestral voices whispering intuitions.
On the projection screen, fragmented images of the character move through the space, composing a dreamlike, hypnotic atmosphere.
In the second act, the character handles an instrument created by the artist herself, built from the body of a discarded guitar.
As she plays it, she touches her own body as well, creating a hybrid form between machine, instrument, and woman — a game between auto-eroticism and exhibitionism.
In the third act, the character stands over a table filled with dishes, glassware, herbs, and food. Slowly, she manipulates these elements, looping the sounds and creating a noise-music composition that gradually fills the space, transforming into a chaotic sonic game.
She tries, at every moment, to organize the scene, to stay within the boundaries of the table, to not cross the line… until she finally succumbs to exhaustion.
On the screen, we see her distant, watery eyes watching her own collapse — which is, ultimately, also her liberation.
All of the sound is created live.
Using loop pedals, the artist-character layers numerous repetitions, building soundscapes and musical textures that dialogue with each moment of the performance.
Lighting plays a crucial dramaturgical role, shaping atmospheres in the space and acting in the game between what is revealed and what remains hidden.
It interacts with the projected images, which elevate the performer to the screen, expanding the body in the scene.
PHOTO DOCUMENTATION
Performances presented in the Basement of Theatro José de Alencar and in the Immersive Room of the Museum of Image and Sound of Ceará, in August and September 2025.
Photos by Micaela Menezes and Taís Monteiro.
CREDITS
Direction / Performance / Research: THAÍS DE CAMPOS
Research: AMORFAS
Director of Photography: IRENE BANDEIRA
Gaffer: PRISCILA ARAÚJO
Scenography and Costume Desing: NATÁLIA PARENTE and THAÍS DE CAMPOS
Art & Photography Assistant: IAN ARAUJO
Dramaturgy: LORETA DIALLA
Textual Consultation: ÉRICA ZÍNGANO
Editing & Finalization: DANI CORREIA
Visual Identity: CLARA VASCONCELOS
Social Media: PRISCILA BAIMA
Sound Technicians: TIAGO CAMPOS e NAIARA LOPES
Lighting: RAO FREITAS and YANKA LEANDRA
