SELF-UNCENSORED [UnCoding] | ARTISTS AND PROJETS

Manual de resistência para 2050
conference-performance-concert
Ana Borralho & João Galante
 
In Manual de resistência para 2050, Ana Borralho & João Galante put forward a conference-performance-concert that transforms collapse into performing code, using fiction and irony as a language to imagine other forms of resistance and future. Between body, word and darkness, Borralho & Galante explore failure as a space for sound listening and collective reinvention.
 
 
Ana Borralho (b. 1972, Lagos) and João Galante (b. 1968, Luanda) are Portuguese artists with a unique and transdisciplinary career that crosses visual arts, performance, theatre, dance and sound. They have been working together since 2001, creating works that stand out for their formal experimentation, ethical and political commitment, and close relationship to the audience. Their artistic practice approaches the body as a place of questioning and as a critical tool when it comes to social, cultural and economic systems.
Both have training in visual and performing arts—Ana studied sculpture at Ar.Co and João studied painting and dance at Forum Dança—, having worked with various contemporary Portuguese choreographers and directors. They were part of the OLHO group (1992-2002), directed by João Garcia Miguel, as actors and co-creators.
Together, they created projects such as Mistermissmissmister (2002), sexyMF (2007), World of Interiors (2010), Atlas (2011), Gatilho da Felicidade [Trigger for Happiness] (2012) and Manual de Instruções [Instructions Manual] (2016), which were presented at major festivals and institutions in countries such as France, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Scotland, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Their work often articulates collaborative and participatory practices, questioning structures of power, identity and community.
They founded and run the artistic structure casaBranca, based in Lagos, and are the artistic directors of Blue Summer Festival, a transdisciplinary project for contemporary creation and distribution in southern Portugal. In 2024, they launched Blue Summer School, a training programme in performing arts. In addition to artistic creation, they are dedicated to curating, teaching and engaging with the territory, committing themselves to decentralisation, diversity and cultural ecology.
 
 
 
Ecstatic Antibodies
Emmanuel Ndefo
 
 
Ecstatic Antibodies is an ongoing research based on the photographic work of the exiled Nigerian queer photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode (20 April 1955 – 21 December 1989).
The work is an ASMR-driven performance that uses breath, touch, taste, and voice to reveal the inherited scripts that shape how Black bodies are seen, desired, and disciplined within Western contexts.
“I propose a guided meditation using the intimate act of eating to create a heightened sensory state where participants can feel the subtle tensions between pleasure, shame, fantasy, and the exotic gaze. By linking the tactility of fruit with video, voice, tempo, and atmosphere, Ecstatic antibodies expose how stereotypes seep into the body and how presence, attention, and sensation can resist them.
 
*Fani-Kayode’s studio works are particularly interesting to me because they explore issues such as Afro-queer sexuality, desire and spirituality using Yoruba rituals and traditions. The photo series Nothing to Lose is especially fascinating to me. I am drawn to the compositions, the dramatic lighting, and the form of the black male bodies posing with lush fruits, foods, and nourishing liquids. This figure of the naked black male engaged in a mysterious, sensual, and ritualised communion with fruits opens a broad field of questions to me. It suggests that our ideas of sexuality and the body are located in particular historical, cultural, and literary formulations of food.
 
 
I am particularly motivated to participate in Self-Uncensored because its focus on indirect and internalised censorship speaks directly to my artistic concerns. Much of my work examines the use of nudity, ecstasy and eroticism in African ancestral arts and spiritualities, and how these have been suppressed or misinterpreted in different contexts. In Nigeria, queer existence is criminalised, and the body — especially when associated with no-normative desire — is seen as a threat. In European and international settings, more subtler forms of restriction emerge through institutional frameworks that appear protective, but in practice limit the reception of art.”
Emmanuel Ndefo
 
 
Emmanuel Ndefo (b. 1991, Kano, Nigeria) is a multidisciplinary choreographer, performance artist, and researcher whose work explores the body as both tool and site of inquiry. He engages the broad metaphor of “hacking,” conceiving the human body as a network or system in which experiences circulate as data — vulnerable to disruption, corruption, and transformation. By probing these vulnerabilities, he opens spaces of rupture, devotion, and new discovery, revealing how performance can activate wider contemporary conversations. Rooted in dance, performance, photography, film, and installation, Ndefo’s practice navigates the intersections of ritual and subversion within African performance traditions. He combines his formal training as a dance anthropologist with embodied knowledge from practising traditional African rituals and dances, alongside urban movement cultures such as hip‑hop, krump, and house. Working within this overlap of forms, he creates hybrid projects that interrogate how bodies negotiate history, technology, and power. Ndefo was awarded the ACF African Culture Fund (2019) and the African No Filter Storytellers Fund (2021). Notable works include “Moving Between”, "Traces of Ecstasy” and “Adamma”. His research and performances have been presented internationally at institutions and festivals such as the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos (2022), Centre National de la Danse, Paris (2017), Tate Modern, London (2019), Transformatorio Festival, Sicily (2018), TanzNet Dresden (2021), Villa Karo, Benin Republic (2022), Berlin Biennale (2022), Nordic Summer University, Oslo (2022), Kampnagel, Hamburg (2023), KunstWerk Köln (2023), PACT Zollverein, Essen (2023), Turku New Performance Biennale, Finland (2023), and RAID Festival, Salerno (2023), among others.
 
 
 
DE•NEGRIR or becoming black
Isabél Zuaa
 
Creation and performance: Isabél Zuaa Creative support: Fantástico Preto Musical direction: António Tavares and Miriam Simas – BOMBU MININU Video editing and translation: Mauro Hermínio
 
DE•NEGRIR or becoming black is a performance-conference that questions the pressures of representation and the invisible taboos that permeate artistic creation. Between discourse and gesture, Isabél Zuaa—a multidisciplinary Portuguese-Guinean-Angolan artist who has had experiences in Brazil—draws on her career to reflect on what is considered viable and non-viable in the contemporary scene.
 
DE•NEGRIR or becoming black means, here, asserting the right to become black—a positive gesture of investigation and affirmation that confronts stereotypical conventions and challenges norms that silence, standardise and drain the power of difference. An exercise in autonomy and presence, where art, body and thought become a space for ‘re-existence’ and living memory.
 
 
Isabél Zuaa is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Lisbon, with Angolan and Guinean origins. Her practice builds on dramaturgies in which bodies like hers take centre and leading stage, putting forward narratives in which presence, identity and memory intertwine. Through the artistic object as a living archive, she summons biographies and references to raise far-reaching questionings. In 2019, she founded the collective Aurora Negra together with Cleo Diára and Nádia Yracema. The group made its debut at TNDM II with Aurora Negra (2020), followed by Cosmos (2022) and Missão da Missão (2023) at Teatro do Bairro Alto. They also created the Kilombo Festival, whose first edition took place at Espaço Alkantara (2021) and the second at Teatro São Luiz (2023), in partnership with the Alkantara Festival.
Isabél is co-founder of UNA – União Negra das Artes. She was featured in BANTUMEN’s POWERLIST 2021 and 2022 as one of the 100 most influential personalities in the Portuguese-speaking world.
 
 
 
Minute of Scream For..
Jana Shostak
 
 
The Minute of Scream For.. began in 2020 following the fraudulent elections in Belarus.
In 2021, it became a Minute of Scream for women in Poland during protests against the abortion ban. In 2022, it became a Minute of Scream for Ukraine. In 2024, it became a Minute of Scream for Palestine. In 2024, it became a Minute of Scream for Lisa, who was raped to death in the centre of Warsaw. In 2026, at TBA in Lisbon, there will be a Minute of Scream for Iran and Ukraine. 
 
Covered by over 170 media outlets, it has become an ephemeral monument to powerlessness. However, when performed by a group of people, it turned out to be a moment of empowerment and proof that we are not alone.
 
It is quite interesting, after all these five years, to appear with a Minute of Scream For.. to the country where the first minute of silence was documented during The First. World War.
 
Jana Shostak (born in 1993 in Grodno, Belarus) is a conceptual / tactical artist who become a help activist in 2020. Currently, she lives and works in Warsaw, and has a PhD in visual art. Since 2016, she has consciously used mass media as a tool to disseminate her art/activism.
She has won several awards for combining art and activism.
Since 2020, she has co-created the ephemeral memorial Minute of Scream for Belarus every day at 6 pm (until the end of the revolution and for one more day, in different ways), which has received universal recognition.
For this performance, she has been labelled an extremist by the Belarusian regime.
 
 
 
 
I AM MY MOTHER
(A dance piece by Mohammad Abbasi)
 
My mother has never danced in her life, and I can’t easily accept it, so I wonder how I could make her move.
I imagine entering my mother’s body and moving from within her. I dance, and she dances too. It becomes a duet, my mother and I, moving as one.
What does she feel as I dance inside her body?
This question gave birth to the piece.
 
 
Manifesto on autonomy
Mohammad Abbasi
 
 
Mohammad Abbasi transforms his manifesto Manifesto on autonomy into a performance-lecture that confronts the tensions between artistic freedom and institutional constraints.
As a Global Southern artist living in exile in the Global North, he unpacks the mechanisms of censorship, funding structures, cultural hierarchies, and power relations across global divides.
By questioning the artist's role within systems of control and the boundaries of self-expression, Abbasi invites us into a space where autonomy is both claimed and interrogated.
This performative presentation becomes a tool for disruption and reflection, exploring how we might (re)claim our voice and agency in a world that seeks to domesticate dissent.
 
 
Mohammad Abbasi (born in 1977 in Shiraz, Iran) is an actor, dancer, choreographer, video artist, and festival director whose work explores the intersections of performance, activism, and embodied research.
He studied theatre directing at the University of Tehran, where he also performed in several productions with the Mehr Theatre Group. Abbasi created his first choreographic work, Recall Your Birthday, at the Fadjr Festival in 2003. From 2008 to 2010, he studied contemporary dance at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France.
After returning to Iran, he founded the Invisible Centre of Contemporary Dance in Tehran, supporting independent dance in a context where the art form remains largely unofficial. In 2011, he launched the UNTIMELY Solo Dance Festival, which showcased works by emerging Iranian choreographers alongside international productions from Brussels, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Zurich.
Since 2008, Abbasi has also been active as a dance filmmaker. His film I AM MY MOTHER has been screened internationally and has received multiple awards.
As an educator, Abbasi has led more than 150 workshops in cities such as Tehran, Shiraz, Sanandaj, Hashtgerd, Marvdasht, Munich, Leuven, Berlin, Geneva, and Izmir.
His work is often politically charged, addressing cultural restrictions surrounding dance in Iran and using artistic activism to question and challenge systems of authority.
 
 
 
 
 
Sepideh Khodarahmi is an Iranian-Swedish artist based in Portugal and Sweden. She studied at the Academy of Music and Drama in Gothenburg, the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Amsterdam (Amsterdam University of the Arts), and the Broadway Dance Center in New York. Since 2016, she has been exploring drag as both a form of performance and a pedagogical tool, engaging with themes such as destruction, cakesitting, hypergender, eroticism, intimacy, queerness, and power. In her work, sensuality appears as both a recurring element and a method. Sepideh has collaborated with Marina Abramović, Hooman Sharifi, and Dinis Machado, and has performed on prestigious stages such as The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm and Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in Lisbon. She also took part in PACAP (the Advanced Programme of Creation in Performing Arts) with Meg Stuart at Forum Dança in Lisbon.