In her practice, Diambe (Rio de Janeiro, 1993) moves between audiovisual, sculpture and dance, often exploring the intersections between these fields. In her proposition for the second edition of Pivô Satellite, the artist presents two brand new works, joão VI (from the series Devolta) and Einstein Remix. The first one follows on from Diambe’s fire choreographies performed around historical monuments in Rio de Janeiro.

The notion of choreography is stretched to different agents (Diambe’s “pals”), who are invited to make a string of fabric – a so-called “Teresa” made of different items of clothes – around public statues of figures such as D. Pedro I, D. João VI and Princess Isabel, that controversially symbolize the triumph of the Brazilian colonial project. Following the first ritual, the artist sets the string on fire, creating a circle of flames whose controlled duration is not aimed at destroying the public figures on their podiums, but at instating a powerful, yet ephemeral, allegorical image that challenges them.

In Einstein Remix, the artist’s pals are invited to individually read a poem of the same name by Ricardo Aleixo, from Minas Gerais. Each performer, in their own way, seeks to decipher the visual text originally formatted as a chessboard capable of numerous linguistic and lexical combinations. Here, the notion of choreography gains nuance in a collective cacophony, where the attempts to speculate about the figure of “god” form a solitary dance floor sustained by the power of collectiveness, in a similar way to other works in Diambe’s instigating and potent practice.