The work of Virginia de Medeiros centers on documentary strategies, as a means to transgress mainstream accounts and question the boundaries between reality and fiction. The artist deals with three themes within the field of art and documentary: dislocation, participation, and fabulation.
Read MoreSérgio e Simone (2009/2014), selected for the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014) and recipient of the ICCo residency award at the 18th Festival de Arte Contemporânea Videobrasil, documents the life of Simone, a transvestite who lived at the Ladeira da Montanha, in Salvador, capital of Bahia. Like most the residents of the borough, Simone was an avid drug user. However, after a crack overdose, she suffers a mystical delirium causing her to "find God" and circumvent death. From this episode onwards Simone abandons her identity as a transvestite, retakes her baptism name of Sérgio and becomes an avid evangelical preacher in a delirious quest to save humanity.
Virginia de Medeiros was born in 1973 in Feira de Santana, Bahia. She lives and works in São Paulo. In 2006 Studio Butterfly was selected for the Programa Rumos Itaú Cultural, and, that same year, was selected for the 27th São Paulo Biennial. In 2009, she participated of the residency program International Women for Peace Conference in Dili, East Timor and, in 2007, of the residency at Centro de Artes La Chambre Blanche, in Quebec, Canada. Recipient of the award Rede Nacional Funarte Artes Visuais in 2009, with the video Fala dos Confins which was later acquired, in 2013, by the Centro Cultural São Paulo. In 2010, she participated of the 2a Trienal de Luanda Geografias Emocionais, Arte e Afectos and, in 2011, of the 32o Panorama da Arte Brasileira at MAM, in São Paulo. She was the recipient of the Rede Nacional Funarte Visuais award (2009) with Jardim das Torturas and the Prêmio de de Residência ICCo (Instituto de Cultura Contemporânea) residency award at Residency Unlimited in New York, USA. Recent solo shows include: Cães Sem Plumas (Museu de Arte Aloísio Magalhães - MAMAM, Recife, Brazil, 2014); Missão (Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, 2014); Cães Sem Plumas (prólogo) (Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil, 2013); Projeto Novas Aquisições MAC CE- Dos percursos e das poesias (Dragão do Mar, Fortaleza, Brazil, 2013); and Coletiva Instituto Cervantes (Instituto Cervantes, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012).
