Scene artist and researcher
Actress | Performer | Playwright
Anticolonial - Ka'a.
Ka'adela Platform
What to do with colonial monuments? It is from this question that Platadorma Ka'adela was born. Created by Idylla Silmarovi in 2021, it brings together artists and activists from different artistic languages in what is understood as a Temporary Autonomous Collective to research, experiment and act artistically in urban spaces and tension the spaces of memory that honor torturers, colonizers and genocidal women . With this work, we seek to remove the power of colonial memory by evoking the memories of our bodies, bringing to light our right to memory, existence and reference.
We believe in the power of open work, of work in process that allows deepening and transformations based on encounters.
The Ka'adela platform has already carried out a series of experiments and actions in urban space, including:
1 - "Ka'adela - a destituent cartography", by the Panorama RAFT festival in 2021
2 - "Ka'adela - anti-colonial action in self-defense", by the Belo Horizonte Municipal Culture Incentive Fund, in 2022
3 - "Ka'adela - prophecies", by the Belo Horizonte International Theater Festival, in 2022
4 - "Ka'adela - collective action of counterattack", by the Festival Panorama 30 years and the SESC Dance Biennial, in 2023.
As it is a platform made up of artists from different regions of Brazil, our creative strategy is based on artistic residencies carried out by people from the collective to create, plan and carry out actions, residences that are sometimes only carried out by people from the collective and by others, open to local audiences interested in carrying out actions with us.
Work created by the temporary Autonomous Collective, a platform formed by the artists: David Maurity, Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá, Fredda Amorim, Idylla Silmarovi, Juão Nyn, Rafael Lucas Bacelar and Vina Jaguatirica.
Ações:
POVOAR - MIRAÇÃO
Make the images dance
1st edition: PACT Zollverein (Essen / Germany)
2nd edition: Ibero-American Festival of Performing Arts MIRADA (Santos/SP)
3nd edition: SESC_Pompeia (São Paulo/SP)
For many Indigenous peoples, the concept of "image" extends beyond how society generally perceives it. Above all, it reflects how each society views, conceptualizes, and relates to the world it inhabits. In the Akwē (Xakriabá) language, *Hêmba* is the term used to refer to the soul and spirit, while also serving as the translation for image, art, and photography. Similarly, the Yanomami shaman and leader Davi Kopenawa emphasizes that one of a shaman's roles is precisely to make the images of their *Xapiri*—spirits that assist shamans in matters of war, illness, and healing—dance.
In these times, we move in collective orbit, populated by spirit-images, practices, encounters, and affects. Live, in-person arts can also usher in different temporalities within the city, creating focal points in spaces often overlooked in the daily life of the streets. How can we—through performance—blur the boundaries separating the realm of art from everyday life? We turn our gaze toward live, in-person arts and the territories they inhabit—territories both visible and invisible; territories that are, first and foremost, bodies; territories that remain as traces of something erased yet still alive to some degree. We build and challenge worlds, blur boundaries, and populate our collective imagination with a vast array of experiences.
To this end, building upon the work they carry out together within the Ka’adela Platform, ethnophotographer Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá and performance artist/researcher Idylla Silmarovi propose an artistic residency based on these themes. The residency shares key theoretical concepts and creative strategies developed through the Ka’adela Platform, such as the creation of counter-colonial imaginaries, masking, collective performance actions, the occupation of monuments and statues, collaborative writing, and photo and video documentation that reflects on the nature of the image and its mediums. Through this process, we develop what we call "Povoar-Miração" (Populating-Visioning), setting our "body-images" in motion using photography, video, performance, and the spoken word as our mediums. The residency culminates in an internal sharing of a video-performance that documents the residency period and specific performance actions, serving as a record of this learning experience.
This artistic residency is an educational initiative of the Ka’adela Platform designed to share and revisit practices and knowledge developed collectively. Given this nature, we work from the collective’s theoretical, aesthetic, and performance repertoire—developed by the artists who comprise the Platform: David Maurity, Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá, Fredda Amorim, Idylla Silmarovi, Juão Nyn, Rafael Bacelar, and Vina Amorim. Regarding aesthetics, we invite residents to share costumes, objects, and masks that form part of their own artistic narratives and memories for collective experimentation.
We also draw upon our own aesthetic repertoire, including costumes by Gabi Dominguez and Luiz Dias; traditional art objects produced by the Kambiwá, Pataxó, and Potyguara peoples; jaguar masks created by Mari Teixeira; and other masks produced collectively by the Ka’adela Platform.
***The third edition of the Povoar-Miração project (SESC-Pompeia) featured the collaboration of Juão Nyn as one of the artists leading the residency.
1st edition teaser video
Video performance of the 1st edition
Video - performance of the 2nd edition
Video - performance of the 3nd edition
Ka'adela -
Collective counterattack action
In Rio de Janeiro: Monument to D. Pedro and Monument to Duque de Caxias
In Campinas: Monument to the black mother and the Princess of the West
A large corps de ballet dances through the streets. Thinking of the city as an open-air colonial art museum, the performance proposes a counterattack to its symbols, through elements of the arts of presence. The action seeks to materialize the collective dream of removing colonial images and memories to bring to light those that were erased and obfuscated by the system.
Guided by a performative script, the band invites those present to rethink issues surrounding collective memories, similarities and differences. Exploring a hybrid and ephemeral artistic language, such as bodies, the work is a “ka’atimbó”, a macumba that raises dust, spreads smoke and refounds imaginaries to create other worlds.
Created by Idylla Silmarovi, the work is danced by her, Juão Nyn, David Maurity and Vina Amorim, and by the participants of the artistic residency conducted over five days before the presentations by members of Plataforma Ka'adela (Rafael Bacelar, Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá and Fredda Amorim). The residency deals with sharing the performative strategies for occupying monuments and dance developed by the collective throughout its existence.
The collective is an interterritorial and multilingual project in the field of performing arts, bringing together indigenous, black and/or LGBTQIA+ artists and activists. Together, they develop performative actions in colonial monuments in urban centers, giving new meanings to images that honor torturers, invaders and genocides, and that reinforce colonial stereotypes and myths.
Team:
Performers: David Maurity, Idylla Silmarovi, Juão Nyn, and Vina Amorim
Director: Rafael Bacelar
Audiovisual performance: Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá
Production Management: Fredda Amorim / Showme Produções Artísticas
Artistic Residency Facilitators: David Maurity, Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá, Idylla Silmarovi, Juão Nyn, Rafael Bacelar, and Vina Amorim
Jaguar mask creation (used in the performance): Mari Teixeira
Produced by: Plataforma Ka'adela
Video teaser recorded in RJ:
Video recording of the SESC Dance Biennial:
Ka'adela -
anti-colonial action in legitimate-defense
Action carried out occupying five monuments in the city of Belo Horizonte (2022)
Search for maps in the city of Belo Horizonte monuments, streets and routes that maintain the city's colonial imagery. This edition took place five performative actions on the streets of Belo Horizonte. The five performances propose the destitution of colonial truths in the ephemerality characteristic of the performing arts, by relating creatively and artistically with the monuments, the streets and history itself. It is a resumption, the demarcation that the urban territory is also indigenous, as is the entire territory that we now call Brazil. It is an anti-colonial treaty on self-defense.
After a lot of trying to silence us
After many people tried to speak for us, our speech became a roar, the cry of a jaguar!
We are here to convene, megaphonize for the jaguar.
With all our ways of fighting, summoning and invoking, of creating, sharing and transmuting! Let's go!
Occupation locations:
Abya Yala Fair
Monument to Guararapes
Military Village in the Graça neighborhood.
Pampulha Art Museum
Pindorama Bus (4802)
Video documentary of the actions:
TEAM:
Idealization - Idylla Silmarovi
Directed by - Rafael Bacelar
Enchantment direction - Avelin Buniacá Kambiwá
Cinematography - Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá
Jaguar performers - Avelin Buniacá Kambiwá, Idylla Silmarovi and Juão Nyn
Dramaturgy and script - David Maurity
Contractual consultancy - Juão Nyn
Costume Design - Gabi Dominguez
Mask Making - Mari Teixeira
Cameras - Alexandre Hugo and Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá
Editing and finishing - Alexandre Hugo
Production Director - Fredda Amorim
Executive Production - Vina Amorim
Designer - Kawany Tamoyos
Communication Advisory - Thamira Bastos
Realization - Ka'adela Platform / Temporary Autonomous Collective
Ka'adela - Prophecies
Performance performed at FIT-BH 2022
Prophecies was prepared for the Belo Horizonte International Theater Festival (FIT-BH). It was held at the entrance to the Vila Dias community. We discussed re-existence with the community and rescued memories of its founding. A 30-minute action was held that discussed memory, and the resumption of memories as an action of resistance and the possibility of creating a possible world for the majorities that are minoritized by the colonial cis-theme.
Video recording of the action:
Ka'adela -
A destitute cartography
Action carried out for the Panorama RAFT Festival (2021)
In this first edition, prepared for the Panorama RAFT festival (RJ), we mapped the colonial monuments present in the city of Belo Horizonte and carried out a disguise action at the monument to Duque de Caxias, genocide of indigenous and black people. We transformed his statue into Galdino Pataxó, an indigenous leader who was burned alive by teenagers in the city of Brasília. In this way, we “erased” the Duke’s memory and brought the history of this leadership to the public debate in the city.
Synopsis: Rewrite with the ashes the story about the marks of blood left in the creases of the earth.” Ka’adela is an animal without the right to belong who searches the sewers of history for his own. She meets the jaguar and the two build alliances with other subjects who weave together the creation of a hybrid artistic language, bordering and ancestral, like the bodies themselves. Ka’adela is a project, research in development, a shared cry.
Full performance video:
