Brenda Bazante

Recife – PE, 1978

Brenda Bazante is an artist who explores and tensions mediums and disciplines such as Sculpture, Kinetic Art, and Photomontage. She dedicates herself to investigations in the field of Contemporary Art, currently with an emphasis on the meeting points and weavings of her own creative process and the representation of sexually dissident and gender-dissident bodies. Through her sculpture, kinetic, and photomontage-based research, she aims to comprehend how autobiographical narratives can help to represent corporeal changes undertaken by transsexual women and travestis.

Brenda Bazante has a teaching degree in Arts, with a specialization in Methodology of Art Teaching. She is currently pursuing her MA degree in Arts at the Federal University of Pernambuco/Federal University of Paraíba (PPGAV UFPE/UFPB), researching the representation of trans and travesti women’s bodies through the elaboration of the concepts of  “Corpo-Estático Compulsório” [“Compulsory Static-Body”], “Corpo-Cinético em Libertação” [“Kinetic-Body in Liberation”], “Corpo-Cinético “Libertado” [“Kinetic-Body “Liberated”] and “Trava Transcorpocinética” [“Trans-body-kinetic Trava*”]. These concepts have as reference the combination of the imagery of trans and travesti bodies with concepts coming from the fields of Theater, Chronophotography, and Constructivism. In alliance with biographic and autobiographical narratives, these theories fuel creative processes around the representation of sexually and gender-dissident bodies, specifically of trans and travesti women.

Complementary to her formal education, Brenda Bazante has a vast production of academic papers in which she talks about themes such as “a Trava Transcorpocinética” [“the Trans-body-kinetic Trava”] and dissident artistic practices.

Brenda Bazante is the director of the Ateliê de Artes Visuais Flor de Antúrio [Art Studio of Flor de Antúrio], and she has also curated collective shows such as “Agora/Ágora”, in Recife (2021), “Serquererdizer” at the II Festival Transborda, in Recife (2018), as well as in the third edition of that same festival, in 2020.

As an artist, she has a wide trajectory of shows and performances in many museums in Recife and cities in the countryside of Pernambuco, such as the exhibition “Galhos” at the II Festival Transborda, in Recife (2018), Festival Sonora, in Olinda (2018) and at the Museu do Homem do Nordeste [“Museum of the Man of the Northeast”], in Recife/Engenho Massangana, at Cabo de Santo Agostinho (2017).

*[The term trava has a double meaning: it’s an informal abbreviation of “travesti”, and the dictionary definition of the term is “hindrance” or “lock”]

Artworks:

“Axó Sutiã-Seios” (2020).  Wearable kinetic sculpture, crochet line, beads, kraft paper, and styrofoam. Varied dimensions.

“Um povo sob máscaras” [“A people under masks”] (2020). Wall sculpture/assemblage with cardboard tubes, fabric masks, wood base, paper, silicone glue, pva glue, acrylic paint, acrylic lacquer, and beads. Dimensions:  90cm x 40cm x 25 cm.

“Autorretrato fragmentado de feminilização fácil digitalmente turbinada” [Fragmented self-portrait of easy feminization digitally turboed] (2021). Photo montage made with Canva. Dimensions: 1080 x1080 pixels.