Sofia Caesar

(this page was last updated in August 2023)

Lives and works between Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Brussels, Belgium

Represented by Galeria Cavalo

PIPA Prize 2023 nominee

Dear Laura,

You asked me what I do as a job. It’s hard to put into words how I got here: feeling my body touching the bed, the cell phone in my hand, heavy. The pain in the pinky because the cell phone was not made for my hand. These are the conditions that invade my body in this sick place, while I write you. Since I started, everything has been about the body. In particular, the bodily effects that this chronic disorder has on my body. Pain, exhaustion, acceleration, pressure, instability, inertia, invasive thoughts and physical sensations that escape everyday “normality”. Since then, I have been trying ways to set in motion these bodily sensations that our world calls “symptoms.” Invent danced relationships between my body and the things around me. By things, I mean chairs or walls. But also people, plants, objects, words, matter, cameras.

On a more abstract level, this comes from a curiosity about the forces that choreograph our movements and bodies. More specifically: how the camera does it. Let me try to explain… with the spread of the cell phone, the cameras are living so close to us… we could say that they merged with our bodies. We become “bodicameras” even if the device is not in hands. Even turned off: this cell phone I use to write to you transforms me. Either it’s into an active worker and protagonist, producing without stopping. And, if it’s not this, this cell phone becomes a tool for obsolescence. It turns people into obsolete bodies: simply not being, not being fit, not being considered or seen or worthy of being alive.

My approach is based on body and movement, coming from somatic therapy, dance and improvisation. Despite my job being all practical, big questions hover: how to keep dancing in ways that are not so sickening to us, as collective bodies, and to the worlds around us? What dances can we dance to fight the forces that choreograph us?

I love you,

Sofia

Fond’Roy Hospital, Brussels, 05/05/23

Website: sofiacaesar.net

Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA 2023:

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