interview with a collage artist: meet miranda almeida
Hi Miranda, it’s been lovely having you in class and getting to know you better this year. For those who haven’t had the pleasure (haha), can you tell us a little about yourself, who you are, where you’re from, and a little about your work?
May all be now blessed with my (online) presence, haha. My name is Miranda, and I’m a sassy trans non-binary sparkling gay from Brasília, Brazil. Professionally, I’ve worked as a graphic designer and cultural producer for Brazillian events and NGOs related to the LGBTQIA+ community since 2016.
My main work is for the Institute LGBT+ of Culture, Art, and Memory, which focuses on educational activities to endorse and rescue artistic creations from LGBTQIA+ folks and the memory of our community in Latin America. I switched gears from design to visual arts this year, mainly as a collagist.
What does the motivation for your work primarily come from?
When I started working as an Art Director and Communication Coordinator on the Institute LGBT+, I had just recognized myself as an LGBTQIA+ person. My knowledge was limited to my personal experiences. Through the Institute, I learned a lot about memory and our erased history as a community. I also taught a lot about affection through our bodies by dancing because I was part of the Ballroom Culture emerging around here.
All of this helped me become who I am and understand that I embody so many other dissident folks that came before me. This made me realize how much we still need to recover and cherish our history and preserve those memories.
Nowadays, everything I create comes from the desire to sing untold stories as a visual bard. To reclaim our existences and build new narratives.
One thing I love about you is that you are very grounded and seem to have a clear sense about politics and power, topics which come up a lot in classes. Can you say something about this? How you got to this place of knowing?
As a confronting LGBTQIA+ person, I was raised by the underground scenes in my hometown, where every conversation crosses paths with politics. This by no means is a negative thing because there is no place to be vulnerable when our own existence is built in vulnerability.
Latin America, in general, has a gruesome colonialist history. But the bloodshed in our lands always faced resistance.
Brazil is a continental-sized country with a turbulent history of epistemicide: indigenous and black folks silenced and tortured by eugenics, a nation built by rape, and a world leader in LGBTQIA+ murder. This pain engraved in our history made us not only pretty tough and angry (an extremely festive anger) but also warm and caring, as we learned that smiling is a political act too.
Talking politics in the bar (and Twitter, because we dominated Twitter worldwide, haha) is a routine.
When you are part of an underground scene of a political minority group, you need to educate yourself to protect yourself and others around you because the streets that may be violent and hostile to some are our home and safe place. And for us to be able to reclaim these streets, we need to be eager to learn about politics and power dynamics inside our society.
You can see that although Brazil is an emerging country, we have astonishing public policies, with strong social movements that granted us judicial power to minorities group that Europe and North America are still trying to achieve. We have many difficulties and controversies, but we rock, yeah.
This year when foreigners were super worried about September 7th and our trashy “president” showing off a flop of military force from the 60s, we watched streams from the parade while drinking beers, laughing, and making memes. This says something about how we do not bow down to fascists. We make jokes as we organize ourselves through public policies and judicial processes.
The more we celebrate through street culture, the more we learn about our own communities and governments. We develop multiple sensibilities by sharing experiences with other people, and all of this stray us so further from our comfort zones that we do not have other choices than to engage politically. It is a tough path, which you cannot go back once you step foot on it. I have lots of rage walking this path, but I could never see myself anywhere else. Anger turned into a positive feeling too. After all, this sentiment is the fuel to our smiles and Carnivals.
Related or possibly unrelated, what is your relationship with color? How does it make you feel? Does it matter how colors make us feel?
Super related, I fell in love with colors during my graduation: I found a book from Lilian Ried, a Brazillian researcher that wrote about Goethe Theory and the Bauhaus.
During my graduation, I tried to apply to a research program to research the psychological and optical effects of the colors used in two films: Amelie Poulain from Jean-Pierre Jeunet and The Grand Budapest Hotel from Wes Anderson. I failed because I was a lousy researcher at the time, but I was inspired, haha.
After this breathtaking encounter with color theories and such, I started to study accessibility in design, focusing on color use to people with low vision, daltonism, and autists.
My studies surrounding the Bauhaus and accessibility made me develop my love for colors and my understanding of them. I do not own black clothes nor avoid using flash colors in everything.
Colors significantly impact how we feel, mostly when we think about fashion and dressing up to create our identity and how this affects how we view the world around us. At least, this was what connected me on a deeper level with a more colorful view of my surroundings. This reflected on my designs and later on my collages when people told me the amount of pink I use makes them feel welcomed and embraced.
Colors reinforce stereotypes and make us relate to others, so understanding the coloring of history helps us identify how colors seem distinct to each individual and different cultures and how we ended up bounded and captivated by them.