Odete

About the artist

Odete works between performance, text, visual arts and music. She has presented her pieces in different formats and places, from exhibitions at galleries like Galeria Municipal de Lisboa (PT) to performances at Berghain Saule (DE), the National Theatre of Lisbon (PT) or even in public parks. Her work is obsessed with historiographical writing, using erotics and paranoia as two somatic ways of relating to the archival materials. She writes through her body, speculating biographies of historical characters through epidermic pleasures: fashion, personality, presence, fragrance, grace, sensibility. Her methodology is called “Paranoid Archaeology” and she has given talks about it in places like Brown University (USA), ESAD (PT), FBAUL (PT) and other institutions of education. She claims to be a bastard daughter of Lucifer, descending from the medieval practice of satanic pacts to alter one’s gendered body. For the past years she has been researching and working around building connection points between “effeminate” histories, from the baroque Castrati to the 19th century dandies to the eunuchs of antiquity.

She is part of The Cursed Assembly, a community investigating the intersections of magic, transsexuality, and historiography. As of now, she has been translating 19th century memoirs and exploring reading groups and potential gatherings at gardensand lakes to discuss the future of our political sphere.

Discover more about the artist’s project and presentation here: Odete