Artist Collaborators
Kamila Camillo
Kamila de Fátima Camillo is a resident of Complexo da Maré’s Tijolinho region, in the Nova Holanda favela, a place that has marked her identity and artistic production. She is a psychologist, photographer, social activist, communicator, and a founder of the Crias do Tijolinho collective. At the age of 14, she started photographing the favela’s daily life to create new and meaningful narratives about her community. After completing several training courses in the field of photography, including at the Popular School of Critical Communication, she turned her lens on the place where she was born and raised, Maré.
In 2018, she produced several photographs of LGBTQIAP+ couples that became the All Forms of Love (Toda forma de amor) series and created the project Fat Favela Women (Mulheres Gordas de Favelas) both of which take a critical look at persisting stereotypes and stigmas. During the pandemic, Camillo organised a photo essay about women motorcycle riders who offer informal passenger transportation services in favelas. Camillo believes in the power of the street and in the power of children. She also believes that art transforms lives just as it daily transforms her own life. She self identifies as a “cria do Tijolinho da Maré,” or, as “born and raised in Maré’s Tijolinho.”
Henrique Gomes
Henrique Gomes is an activist, producer and resident of Complexo da Maré. He is the coordinator of community engagement projects at the NGO Redes da Maré and has over 15 years of experience working in partnership with community organizations and coordinating research projects in Maré. As a community leader, he has played a key role in the production and dissemination of knowledge about Maré.
Gomes started organizing concerts and musical events in Maré when he was 18 years old and has since produced dozens of events. In 2012, he worked as a cultural producer at the Lona Cultural, a local arts and performance space, where he was responsible for the production and curation of live events. As a musician, he was a member of several bands in Brazil, and participated in a tour of 15 cities in Europe in 2014. In addition, he was a producer in the Olhares da Maréfilm school between 2014 and 2018, making several short films, including “Incursion” (2015) about the occupation of Maré by the Brazilian military from 2014-2015. Recently, he completed a feature documentary, “On My Way to School” (2023), about the murder of a student by police and access to education for children and adolescents in Maré.
Dayana Sabany
Dayana Gomes Sabany is a photographer, educator, mother and resident of Complexo da Maré. An alumni of Maré’s School of Popular Photographers, Sabany sees the world from her community’s collective perspective, which centres women’s leadership roles in Maré. Her photographic and pedagogical work addresses issues such as gender, race, and human rights. Sabany has worked as a photographer for the Women of the World (WoW) Festival, in Rio de Janeiro, for the Museu da Pessoa (Museum of the Person), and for the Impacto de Vida (Life Impact) project, which documented stories of women from Maré during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sabany also serves as a pedagogical coordinator of a photography program at the Promundo Institute aimed at young favela residents, with whom she has produced art exhibitions throughout the city of Rio.
Since 2020, Sabany has been working with the Mulheres ao Vento (Women in the Wind) collective, documenting their artistic processes and performances. In 2022, she accompanied the group on an artistic residency in the city of Lille, France, and photographed their performance at Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Theatre during its Favela Art Week (Semana de Arte Favelada).
Paulo Victor Lino
Paulo Victor Lino is an artist, researcher, educator and a resident of Complexo da Maré. With a bachelor’s in History from Rio de Janeiro’s Federal University (UFRJ), Lino is a co-founder of the Entidade Maré collective. From 2018 to 2022, he served as vice-president of the favela LGBT group Conexão G, and is a co-founder and member of the theatre collective Grupo Atiro, where he has been an actor since 2016. In 2018, Lino became the director of Grupo Pantera. In addition to his artistic work, Lino teaches History for the NGO Redes da Maré’s university preparatory courses.
Wallace Lino
Wallace Lino is an actor, director, playwright, educator and resident of Complexo Maré. He has a bachelor’s degree in Theatre from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro and a master’s in Racial Ethnic Relations from the Celso Suckow da Fonseca Federal Technological Education Centre. He is co-founder of Entidade Maré and of two theatre troupes, Cia Marginal and Grupo Atiro. Lino has served as an educator in several community arts initiatives, such as the Trocas Marginais (Marginal Exchanges) theatre workshop, the Rap da Saúde (Health Rap) project, as well as the activities of the Lona Cultural, in Maré.
Francisco Valdean
Francisco Valdean is a photographer and researcher-artist who focuses on the production of images and stories from Complexo da Maré as well as from other peripheral communities in Rio de Janeiro. Valdean is a graduate of Maré’s School of Popular Photographers and holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences, a master’s degree in Visual Anthropology, and a PhD in Arts from Rio de Janeiro’s State University (UERJ). His academic background serves as a theoretical basis for his artistic work, which is committed to contributing to broadening the dialogue about favelas in artistic and academic spaces.
Valdean is the founder and creator of the Museum of the Itinerant Image of Maré (Museu da Imagem Itinerante da Maré, MIIM), a travelling museum that houses a historical-poetic collection of images from Maré. His commitment to preserving and sharing the history and culture of the region is evident in MIIM’s various exhibitions and visual interventions. Valdean is also the author of the book, Images of Maré: Photographic Narrations of the Favela (Imagens da Maré: Narrações Fotográficas da Favela).
Antonello Veneri
Antonello Veneri, born in Italy, has lived in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador for the last 15 years, working as a journalist, photographer and video documentarian. With a degree in Italian Literature and History, he was a journalist, photographer and editor at Questo Trentino magazine (1999-2009) and teacher at the Italian Lyceum. He collaborates regularly with agencies, newspapers and magazines, including Agence France Press, National Geographic, The Guardian, El País, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Folha de São Paulo, Estadão and la Repubblica.
Veneri has held 14 solo exhibitions, including “Avindos” (about Venezuelan refugees) at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Brasília and São Paulo, “Extremos Cotidianos” in Paraty, and “Interiores da Maré” at Brown University and Virginia Tech (USA). In addition, he is co-director of the documentaries “Mãe Stella de Oxóssi/Folhas EnCantadas”, “Água e Vida no Forquilha”, “Venezuela” and “Pescadores Urbanos”. He has received several awards and recognitions, such as the National Geographic Italy best reportage award in 2014, the Felix Schoeller “Photojournalism” award in 2019, and the International Photography Awards in the “Traditions and Cultures” and “Documentary-Environmental” categories in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Organizers
Henrique Gomes is a coordinator of the NGO Redes da Maré, an activist, producer, and resident of Complexo da Maré. He has over 15 years of experience working in partnership with community organisations and coordinating research projects in Maré in various fields. As a community leader, he has been instrumental in producing and disseminating knowledge about Maré.
Andreza Jorge is a favela feminist, academic, artist, and a resident of Complexo da Maré. She has worked with a variety of social projects focused on racial, gender, and sexual identity. She is currently a PhD student at Virginia Tech and a researcher in the program of Arts and Scene Studies at the School of Communication of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her book, Feminismos Favelados (2023, Bazar do Tempo), conceptualises the intersectionality of gender, class, race, and territory from a favela perspective.
Nicholas Barnes is a Lecturer in the School of International Relations and an affiliated faculty in the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He has conducted 3 years of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and lived in Maré for 18 months from 2013 until 2015. He continues to collaborate on numerous projects and with various local institutions in Maré and is currently working on a book about how and why gangs engage in governance in Rio’s favelas.
Desirée Poets is Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Theory at Virginia Tech’s Department of Political Science and a core faculty of the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT) interdisciplinary PhD Program. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Poets has been working with urban Indigenous and Black (favela and maroon) movements and communities in Brazil’s Southeast Region since 2013. She is interested in collaborative and creative research methods; arts, collective memory and community change; and questions of gender, ethnicity, class, and race.
See here for exhibition details including venue and opening times.