Pivô Boulevard Hosts Open Studio with Marlan Cotrim and Renan Marcondes

On September 25th, Pivô Boulevard opens its doors for the closing of the residencies of Marlan Cotrim and Renan Marcondes, artists selected through the 2026 Open Call in the Pivô Imersão program.

The event brings together an open studio, a presentation of processes, and a conversation with curator Uriel Bezerra, who followed the artists’ research throughout their residencies. The kitchen activation will be led by Pablo Cordier.

Marlan Cotrim (Goiânia, 1993) works across textiles and painting, investigating relations of power between heat and energy. In “CLORO-CARVÃO-CALOR-COR-COMBUSTÃO” [CHLORINE-COAL-HEAT-COLOR-COMBUSTION], a research project developed during the residency at Pivô, Marlan takes Salvador and the Recôncavo as a starting point, engaging with the history of oil extraction in places such as Lobato and Candeias. The research examines the effects of mineral extraction and the relationships between thermopolitics, labor, heat, and energy, while attending to the narratives embedded in the materialities of cotton fabric, coal, and chlorine.

The experiments carried out in the studio bring together processes of fabric bleaching with chlorine, interventions using coal, and thermochromic surfaces, creating compositions marked by tremors, instabilities, and states of transformation.

According to Uriel Bezerra, who followed the artist’s process throughout the residency, the research takes the territory of Salvador and the Recôncavo as a site for investigating the effects of thermopolitics, bringing the dynamics of mineral extraction into dialogue with the transformations produced in the studio. In this context, materials also become ways of investigating the relationships between body, energy, and environment.

Renan Marcondes (São Paulo, 1991) is an artist and researcher working across performance and dance. With a hybrid background in theater, dance, and visual arts, his practice investigates finitude, disappearance, and the persistence of bodies, bringing together durational performances, minimal gestures, and different forms of bodily displacement through space.

During his residency at Pivô Boulevard, Marcondes developed “Defunto Carnavalesco” [Carnival Corpse], a research project that begins with an investigation into funeral rituals in Christian and Western societies, bringing collective experiences of mourning into dialogue with another potentially disruptive event in Brazilian urban life: Carnival.

The research takes Salvador and the Recôncavo as a context for observing the coexistence of religious practices and secular, profane manifestations, bringing together different temporalities and ways of processing life and death. At the open studio, the artist will present an excerpt from a performance in progress.

“Set to the soundtrack of a fading pagode, crossed by the nocturnal sounds of the Recôncavo, a pair of legs dances unsteadily and exhaustively,” writes Uriel Bezerra about the process. For the curator, the image “connects past and present, life and death, Ayé and Orun.”

The residency of Marlan Cotrim and Renan Marcondes is part of the Pivô Imersão program of the 2026 Open Call, which welcomes artists and researchers to Pivô Boulevard for periods dedicated to developing and deepening artistic research and projects in Salvador.

 Open Studio | Marlan Cotrim and Renan Marcondes
September 25, from 4pm to 9pm
Process presentation and conversation with Uriel Bezerra at 6pm
Pivô Boulevard — Rua Boulevard Suíço, 11A, Nazaré, Salvador
Free admission.