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17th Conference of the Society for Artistic Research (SAR)

" Ai mona ! " Dimensions of Pop Queer in Brazil through Drag Queen Art, Pajuba and the embodiment of DIY.

🗓️ Wednesday, 24 June — 12:10pm - 1:10pm (60 mins)
Abstract
The delegitimization of the human condition is conditioned by attempts to dissolve cultural bonds between corporeality and language, the very substance of human expression, while simultaneously repositioning codes and agents within artificial environments of repression and surveillance operated by one or more social groups. This coercive dynamic assumes different forms and is, historically, responsible for technical evasion and technical apprehension, for the dissociation of territoriality and identity, and for reframings of violence, subordination, and obedience, from soft to necropolitical hard power.
In Brazil, contemporary Drag Art occupies a hybrid landscape between the digital and online communities, and the tradition of the stage, the bate-cabelo, the lecadas, the Ballrooms, the humor of the Drag host, and above all the linguistic interplay between Brazilian Portuguese, pajubá, and the gestures inseparable from verbal expression that reiterate the foundational signs of the Brazilian queer community: such as the use of feminine grammatical gender even for masculine identities as a form of fraternity and affection, and the use of neutral gender as a stylistic variation made possible by the cultural heritages of the Northeast, the South, and the Southeast of the country.
Through my theory of technological ecosystems, presented in the book Sociedade Tecnológica (2025), I observe the phenomenon of Brazilian Queer Pop, highlighting the importance of cultural diversity as political resistance in critical times of repression and violence against the LGBT+ community in Brazil and in the contemporary world, both in the digital, DIY community dimension and in the dimension of events and the culture of material presence, considering the sedimentations and historicity of this artistic form as well as the delicacy and linguistic robustness that make Drag Art a centra
Biography
Vannie Gama is a Brazilian visual artist, writer, and interdisciplinary researcher working across expanded painting, installations, ecology, technology, and contemporary art theory. Author of O Cultivar das Imagens, Organic Manifesto, Sociedade Tecnológica, and ''Leão e o Unicórnio'', they have joined residencies in the UK and Paris, exhibited at the Montenegro Fine Art Nude Biennial, and develop work in eco‑queer surrealism. Gama studies ecofuturism in the semiotics PhD program at UQAM .Their last art-and-sciences project was "Atras do Tempo" at CEPID Neuromat - Centro de Pesquisa, Inovação de Difusão em Neuromatemática e Estatística (2025). He is currently working at the "Astropoética" (2025-2027) art series.