Transdisciplinary Artist Beatriz Azevedo
A Brazilian multi-artist from São Paulo, based in Rio de Janeiro, “who has emerged in recent years as one of Brazil’s most innovative artists”. Performer, poet, director, singer and songwriter, Beatriz Azevedo’s artistic practice mixes the languages of music, theater, literature and audiovisual. Beatriz Azevedo holds a PhD in Performing Arts, a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a BA in Theater from Unicamp. She studied music at the Mannes College of Music in New York and dramaturgy at the Sala Beckett in Barcelona.
In recent years, she has completed three post-doctoral studies: one at the Sorbonne Université Paris IV, France; another at the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU New York University, USA, where she collaborated directly with Robert Stam; and at Nudecri Center for the Development of Creativity, at Unicamp, Brazil. Beatriz Azevedo is currently an Associate Member of the Centre de Recherches Sur Les Pays Lusophones at Sorbonne Université Paris III, a Visiting Scholar at Tisch Arts, New York University, and a post-doctoral researcher at UNICAMP.
Beatriz wrote the music, lyrics and arrangements for 6 original albums: CLARICE CLARÃO (Sesc 2022 label), A.G.O.R.A (biscoito fino 2019), ANTROPOPHAGIA AO VIVO EM NOVA YORK (recorded live at Lincoln Center in New York, 2015), ALEGRIA with Tom Zé (2008), MAPA-MUNDI SAMBA AND POETRY (Acrobeat, 2002), BUM BUM DO POETA (Nippon Crown Natasha Record, 2000). Beatriz Azevedo’s music appears on Brazil: The Essential Album, alongside Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Elis Regina, João Gilberto and other Brazilian masters, released by the British label Union Square Music. Also in England, the CD Bossa Nova Nights contains two more tracks by Beatriz Azevedo. Bum Bum do Poeta, her first album, was released in Brazil on Caetano Veloso’s Natasha Records label and in Japan on Nippon Crown Records. Commissioned by Lincoln Center in New York, Beatriz created the show antroPOPhagia, presented at the Walter Reade Theater. The live concert later became the musical album antroPOPhagia live in New York, released by Biscoito Fino in Brazil and Discmedi in Europe.
His published works include Transmatriarcado de Pindorama in Modernismos 1922-2022 (Companhia das Letras, 2022); Antropófago Manifesto in Antropofagias: Practices of Devouring from Oswald de Andrade (Peter Lang publishers, Berlin, 2021); Abracadabra (Demônio Negro, 2019) with a foreword by Zé Celso Martinez Correa; Antropofagia Palimpsesto Selvagem (Cosac Naify, 2016), a new approach to Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago, with a preface by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and drawings by the artist Tunga; The City with Lacan, Cinema and Literature (Brazilian School of Psychoanalysis), Stone Age and Peripatetic (Editora Iluminuras). Her writings and poetry have appeared in various publications, including Dusie 21, the edition of contemporary Brazilian poetry (Dusie Press, San Francisco, USA); Contemporary Poets of Brazil (Unicamp); Garganta 20 contemporary Brazilian poets, and the book Acabou Chorare, alongside Caetano Veloso and Arnaldo Antunes. Beatriz translated the French authors Jean Genet and Bernard-Marie Koltés, published for the first time in Brazil in the book Teatro de Bernard-Marie Koltes (Hucitec).
Beatriz directed the documentary NOW CLARICE (50′), licensed for Sesc TV/Sesc Digital in Brazil. Invited by Princeton University, Beatriz Azevedo created the audiovisual Now Clarice to celebrate 100 years of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Filmed live, the presentation brings together Beatriz Azevedo, Moreno Veloso and Maria Bethânia. The musical doc is now open to other partnerships, screenings and international distribution.
DEVORATIONS is a cinematographic essay, a feature film in the making. For more than two decades, Beatriz Azevedo has been researching Anthropophagy, the ancestral knowledge of the Amerindians. All this experience will converge in the film-essay DEVORATIONS, with the voices of the native peoples of Pindorama. Taking part in the Kuarup rituals in the Xingu Indigenous Park, where she met Cacique Raoni, Beatriz spent weeks living in a Taba, eating fish with her hands, bathing in the river, being painted with Urucum by the indigenous women, singing and dancing with her feet on the ground. She filmed several images that will form part of the ongoing film project.
ENCONTROS ANTROPÓFAGOS is an audiovisual series for TV and an art installation project, with dialogues with great contemporary artists and thinkers. In her creative process, Beatriz has already filmed Zé Celso at Teatro Oficina, philosopher Marcia Tiburi, indigenous leader Urutau Guajajara, Arnaldo Antunes, scenes with Matheus Nachtergaele and Lucélia Santos, interviews with Jorge Mautner, Antonio Candido, Marília de Andrade and many others. Abroad, filming with David Byrne, Spike Lee and Robert Stam in New York, with Maria de Medeiros in Europe, etc. Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro also take part. Like DEVORATIONS, ENCONTROS ANTROPÓFAGOS is also a film + art installation project.
Beatriz has performed widely in Brazil, Europe and the United States. In recent years, she has performed at the MoMA Museum of Modern Art in New York and at Lincoln Center, as well as international festivals, such as Womex (Spain), Nublu Jazz Festival (New York), CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival (New York), Femmes du Monde (Paris), Mirada Ibero-American Festival, Popkomm Festival (Berlin), Dunya Festival (Rotterdam), Copa das Culturas (Berlin), Art Anthropophagie Aujourd’hui (Paris), Paraty International Literary Festival (FLIP), Verizon Music Festival (New York), among others.
She has performed and collaborated with leading musicians, actors, directors and artists such as Maria Bethânia, Matheus Nachtergaele, Adriana Calcanhotto, Tom Zé, Lucélia Santos, Cyro Baptista, Hilda Hilst, Maria de Medeiros, Jaques Morelenbaum, Tunga, Moreno Veloso, Maria Alice Vergueiro, Zélia Duncan and Vinicius Cantuária, as well as with the tropicalist director of Teatro Oficina, Zé Celso Martinez Correa. Beatriz has collaborated with poet Augusto de Campos, writer Hilda Hilst, modernist authors Oswald de Andrade and Raul Bopp, composers Moreno Veloso, Vinicius Cantuária and Zélia Duncan. Her musical compositions have been sung by Adriana Calcanhotto, Matheus Nachtergaele, Moreno Veloso, Tom Zé, Zélia Duncan and Zé Celso Martinez Correa, among others.
Beatriz Azevedo is a recipient of the Cité Internationale des Arts Prize in Paris, France; the Virtuose Award for Artists, New York; the Petrobras Cultural Prize, the Aesthetic Interaction Award, Brazil; the Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana de Madrid, Spain, the PostDoctoral International Grant from FAPESP Research Foundation; and many other grants and prizes.
