In conversation with Thaís Muniz
25 September 2024
We welcomed Thaís Muniz as our artist in residence this summer. At the end of her residency our Lead Producer Andrea Carter caught up with Thaís to reflect on her practice and time at D6 - traversing inherited and acquired identities, inward love, celebration and more.
The interview is in three sections, illustrated by images selected by Thaís from across her practice.
We welcomed Thaís Muniz as our artist in residence this summer. At the end of her residency our Lead Producer Andrea Carter caught up with Thaís to reflect on her practice and time at D6 - traversing inherited and acquired identities, inward love, celebration and more.
The interview is in three sections, illustrated by images selected by Thaís from across her practice.
Andrea Carter: Tell us a little about yourself.
Thaís Muniz: I’m a visual artist interested in communities and stories. I bring imagination and personal magic to my practice and try to promote love and anti-colonial thinking with people who get in touch through my work. I’ve been living in the distance since 2014. I’m Brazilian born, Irish acquired, West and Central African inherited. I work intertwining disciplines, workshops, celebrations, performance, installation, video, film, photography and sculpture. I’m interested in exploring topics that reflect on memory and personhood in a postcolonial context.
AC: The idea of love and inward love run through so much of your work, as well as the phrase ‘mind your head’. Can you share more about this?
TM: I started exploring the head when researching headwraps and discovered the Yoruba concept of ‘Ori’ - this idea of understanding your head as your first deity to be praised and blessed. For me this is really powerful as we’ve been trained to find deities elsewhere - but never within. So Ori, your head, is this first deity - not in a vain way but in a loving and respectful way. Your head is the seat of your soul. This is completely connected to the concept of inward love that I learned from bell hooks, where she shares that she chose to use 'inwardly love' over self-love, because the very notion of 'self' is so inextricably bound up with how we are seen by and in relation to others.” (bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam, 1993). There is this strong and powerful connection with the divine within myself. It’s being attached to our spiritual selves and the magical beings we are!
AC: This is wonderful and universal. It leads to the question of who you engage with and why?
TM: Anyone in need of a decolonial path, especially Black and Brown communities and suppressed communities in the Global South. My practice and projects are usually community-oriented. Like the Turbante-se research which focuses on sharing the physical and metaphysical aspects implied to the head through turbans, headwraps and textiles. This research was sparked through my first workshop for Black and Brown women in Salvador. It was then that I realised it's not just about aesthetics and conforming to those imposed on us but mapping stories, including the ones that tell us why we got so disconnected from our non-aesthetic selves and became trained on changing the way we look, our features, our conception of beauty and so on.
It is really important to me to learn from others: inviting others into my work and projects enables this. The Turbante-se research is a two-way process where I can always learn from others about this vast universe of head and headwear. I learn from participants of my workshops about their references, cultural traditions on headwraps, the type of fabric, and for what situation: it is fascinating and endless! Bringing that knowledge into the daylight is very rewarding. It’s a chance to reconnect with denied aspects of identity that have been demonised or displaced by white beauty standards. Wearing the headdress is not just about protecting our heads physically and spiritually, but it gives a different posture and dynamic and way to move.
Since moving to Ireland, I became more aware of people seeking asylum, which perhaps hasn’t been such a big topic in Brazil until more recently.
Here in Ireland there are a lot of grassroots organisations working to promote change around the way people are treated, for example, their weekly allowance and how they get disconnected from their food and their households. I’ve reflected on my own experience of migration as someone with the privilege of choosing to be in Ireland and able to go back to see my family. I wanted to engage more with people who are forcibly displaced and use my work as a tool to bring a sort of joy or distraction or hope.
My work has always been centred on community. It has never followed the idea of the artist alone in the studio and the self-enlightenment of creation but working together. It’s how I get energised.
AC: When people’s situation is precarious they need access to sharing, creativity and joy, especially when the media and political narratives often polarise people, creating a lack of empathy and distance.
Thaís Muniz: I’m a visual artist interested in communities and stories. I bring imagination and personal magic to my practice and try to promote love and anti-colonial thinking with people who get in touch through my work. I’ve been living in the distance since 2014. I’m Brazilian born, Irish acquired, West and Central African inherited. I work intertwining disciplines, workshops, celebrations, performance, installation, video, film, photography and sculpture. I’m interested in exploring topics that reflect on memory and personhood in a postcolonial context.
AC: The idea of love and inward love run through so much of your work, as well as the phrase ‘mind your head’. Can you share more about this?
TM: I started exploring the head when researching headwraps and discovered the Yoruba concept of ‘Ori’ - this idea of understanding your head as your first deity to be praised and blessed. For me this is really powerful as we’ve been trained to find deities elsewhere - but never within. So Ori, your head, is this first deity - not in a vain way but in a loving and respectful way. Your head is the seat of your soul. This is completely connected to the concept of inward love that I learned from bell hooks, where she shares that she chose to use 'inwardly love' over self-love, because the very notion of 'self' is so inextricably bound up with how we are seen by and in relation to others.” (bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam, 1993). There is this strong and powerful connection with the divine within myself. It’s being attached to our spiritual selves and the magical beings we are!
AC: This is wonderful and universal. It leads to the question of who you engage with and why?
TM: Anyone in need of a decolonial path, especially Black and Brown communities and suppressed communities in the Global South. My practice and projects are usually community-oriented. Like the Turbante-se research which focuses on sharing the physical and metaphysical aspects implied to the head through turbans, headwraps and textiles. This research was sparked through my first workshop for Black and Brown women in Salvador. It was then that I realised it's not just about aesthetics and conforming to those imposed on us but mapping stories, including the ones that tell us why we got so disconnected from our non-aesthetic selves and became trained on changing the way we look, our features, our conception of beauty and so on.
It is really important to me to learn from others: inviting others into my work and projects enables this. The Turbante-se research is a two-way process where I can always learn from others about this vast universe of head and headwear. I learn from participants of my workshops about their references, cultural traditions on headwraps, the type of fabric, and for what situation: it is fascinating and endless! Bringing that knowledge into the daylight is very rewarding. It’s a chance to reconnect with denied aspects of identity that have been demonised or displaced by white beauty standards. Wearing the headdress is not just about protecting our heads physically and spiritually, but it gives a different posture and dynamic and way to move.
Since moving to Ireland, I became more aware of people seeking asylum, which perhaps hasn’t been such a big topic in Brazil until more recently.
Here in Ireland there are a lot of grassroots organisations working to promote change around the way people are treated, for example, their weekly allowance and how they get disconnected from their food and their households. I’ve reflected on my own experience of migration as someone with the privilege of choosing to be in Ireland and able to go back to see my family. I wanted to engage more with people who are forcibly displaced and use my work as a tool to bring a sort of joy or distraction or hope.
My work has always been centred on community. It has never followed the idea of the artist alone in the studio and the self-enlightenment of creation but working together. It’s how I get energised.
AC: When people’s situation is precarious they need access to sharing, creativity and joy, especially when the media and political narratives often polarise people, creating a lack of empathy and distance.
AC: A beautiful characteristic of your practice is, in your words, the collective experience of ‘pure joy’... joy that is obtained through a reconnection with one’s self and in harmony with nature. I love the way of positioning pure joy in the various elements of your work - people empowered to physically represent themselves. And celebration is part of this - a mutual exchange of knowledge and offering a space for collective experiences. Can you share a little more about this?
TM: I realised I’d incorporated celebration as part of my practice when my friend and curator Diane Lima mentioned it to me. Gathering people together is something very common for me to do, but I wouldn't identify it as a medium per se. But it is a great medium that I love exploring. Incorporating celebrations into my practice is a way of affirming happiness as a revolutionary act for certain bodies. It is also a way of remembering who I am and where I come from. And not sinking into a simulation mode of art or something too rigid. We have so many artistic expressions in celebrations - which can be simply a celebration of coming together. My main expression of it is called Escuna Sound System, which is a celebration that happens in the Atlantic waters of Salvador, Bahia. We float on board a schooner type of boat with a sound system and multiple curated music acts, from 9am to sunset. This boat, filled with Black and Brown folks is a completely different Atlantic experience. Only after organising the first edition of this event in 2017 did I meet many people who shared a fear of the sea, and the common thread among them was their African ancestry. So Escuna Sound System became an opportunity for many people who live so close to the sea to go into the water for the first time and find comfort, confidence and support to be exposed to a change of pattern based on fear caused by trauma. There is also my need to bring balance to my practice and making it less rigid and serious; and that celebration is a huge part of how people express themselves and how culture travels, so that’s why I try to make it happen every year when I’m back home.
TM: I realised I’d incorporated celebration as part of my practice when my friend and curator Diane Lima mentioned it to me. Gathering people together is something very common for me to do, but I wouldn't identify it as a medium per se. But it is a great medium that I love exploring. Incorporating celebrations into my practice is a way of affirming happiness as a revolutionary act for certain bodies. It is also a way of remembering who I am and where I come from. And not sinking into a simulation mode of art or something too rigid. We have so many artistic expressions in celebrations - which can be simply a celebration of coming together. My main expression of it is called Escuna Sound System, which is a celebration that happens in the Atlantic waters of Salvador, Bahia. We float on board a schooner type of boat with a sound system and multiple curated music acts, from 9am to sunset. This boat, filled with Black and Brown folks is a completely different Atlantic experience. Only after organising the first edition of this event in 2017 did I meet many people who shared a fear of the sea, and the common thread among them was their African ancestry. So Escuna Sound System became an opportunity for many people who live so close to the sea to go into the water for the first time and find comfort, confidence and support to be exposed to a change of pattern based on fear caused by trauma. There is also my need to bring balance to my practice and making it less rigid and serious; and that celebration is a huge part of how people express themselves and how culture travels, so that’s why I try to make it happen every year when I’m back home.
AC: This brings us to New Atlantic Triangulations - a new and ambitious body of work you’ve been developing since 2022. How did it begin?
TM: New Atlantic Triangulations is self reflection on heritage and acquired identities, and how I'm able to navigate, share and spread information. I respond a lot to the places I go to and find ways to share their communal knowledge through joy and struggles. It’s about reclaiming personal magic, rituals, and spaces to find comfort in the transit. I’ve been making connections between Brazil, West and Central Africa, and Ireland. So far I have produced work from Ireland and Brazil - two parts of this triangle - and I hope to reach the third part, in the Continent soon.
In this research I've been exploring creating territories with the making of banners and flags but by applying meanings to the shapes and elements. This connects to the idea of having to expand structured definitions of my personhood as a Black Brazilian woman. I wanted to create a flag with a circle representing the seat of the soul - representing the head, intuition and inner power. The inner inverted triangle represents matriarchy and more progressive society and inverts the logic that was established with having Black women at the bottom of the social pyramid and trying to reimagine this. The bigger triangle represents the territories and the movement between Brazil, Ireland and West and Central Africa. And the outer circle represents continuity, time and vital energy, while the line represents the line of life, which is not always straight.
It’s an invitation to work with the body, mind and spirit - which I describe as ‘mind your head’. There is also the notion of joy. It reflects on how we used to have lots of connection with nature but due to the impact of colonisation, this changed. I think of the precolonial owners of the land and their relationship with nature, which was often thought of as the main god or different gods and goddesses, all bringing out elements of nature.
AC: During your residency at D6 this summer you focussed on developing a new part of New Atlantic Triangulations - a film series. This work is another layer of the complex expressions and ideas. You reflected a bit on your archive and piecing it together. What process and materials did you draw on? Was it a time of clarity or chaos?
TM: Definitely a time for clarity because in this work I’m touching on so many topics and theories that are intertwined. It was really important for me to stop producing and look at what was already produced and how I wanted this production to be shown. The time during my residency at D6 was really important to go through all my videos and create a logic system. At D6 I started to use colour coding and diagrams to connect the films to the topics and bring in certain topics. I’ve also been assessing what kind of text I want to bring to each film and how the films connect. It’s like a web - it’s connected. It’s one size that makes the whole.
I was very lucky to have a mentoring session with Susan Thomson, who is an artist and director I chose to guide me in this new journey of making films. I started using editing software and thinking more about sound for these pieces.
AC: This notion of points of practice, slow practice and connection is all interesting. What’s next?
TM: My next chapter is evolving around the Kite Ballet series, a series that is part of the New Atlantic Triangulations research. In this series I’ve captured through still and moving images a group of kite runners in the Itapuã neighbourhood in the Abaeté area in Salvador, Brazil. This very special area is actively used for Afro-indigenous spiritual practices and for communal entertainment, like the kite runners. More than show, this is the use of the land without harming nature. I also address environmental issues in the work. I was introduced to the threat this landmark is suffering by the artist and activist Clara Domingas, who has been fighting along with multiple civilians, such as Pio Filho, and other grassroots organisations against the concrete colonisation promoted by real estate companies and government bodies. Part of this work will be presented as the culmination of my Masters in Art and Research Collaboration from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Ireland in a collective exhibition.
AC: Thank you so much Thaís.
Thaís’ recent solo show Rites of Care, Curse and Comfort is on at the Sirius Art Centre, Co. Cork, Ireland ended this October.
Find out more: https://www.thaismuniz.com/
With thanks to Thaís Muniz
Image credits
D6 studio images, 2024. Photos: Matt Denham | Artists social at D6 studio, 2024. Photo: Andrea Carter
Thaís Muniz, Atlantica series. Photo: Guilherme Malaquias | Thaís Muniz, Inner Space of a Future Memory #1, the | Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2023. Photo: Pati Guimaraes | Thaís Muniz, New Atlantic Triangulations Flag. Photo: John Beasley | Thaís Muniz, Kite Ballet. Photo: Antonello Veneri | Thaís Muniz, Take Me To The Land I Also Belong To. Photo: Antonello Veneri
Thank you to support from
TM: New Atlantic Triangulations is self reflection on heritage and acquired identities, and how I'm able to navigate, share and spread information. I respond a lot to the places I go to and find ways to share their communal knowledge through joy and struggles. It’s about reclaiming personal magic, rituals, and spaces to find comfort in the transit. I’ve been making connections between Brazil, West and Central Africa, and Ireland. So far I have produced work from Ireland and Brazil - two parts of this triangle - and I hope to reach the third part, in the Continent soon.
In this research I've been exploring creating territories with the making of banners and flags but by applying meanings to the shapes and elements. This connects to the idea of having to expand structured definitions of my personhood as a Black Brazilian woman. I wanted to create a flag with a circle representing the seat of the soul - representing the head, intuition and inner power. The inner inverted triangle represents matriarchy and more progressive society and inverts the logic that was established with having Black women at the bottom of the social pyramid and trying to reimagine this. The bigger triangle represents the territories and the movement between Brazil, Ireland and West and Central Africa. And the outer circle represents continuity, time and vital energy, while the line represents the line of life, which is not always straight.
It’s an invitation to work with the body, mind and spirit - which I describe as ‘mind your head’. There is also the notion of joy. It reflects on how we used to have lots of connection with nature but due to the impact of colonisation, this changed. I think of the precolonial owners of the land and their relationship with nature, which was often thought of as the main god or different gods and goddesses, all bringing out elements of nature.
AC: During your residency at D6 this summer you focussed on developing a new part of New Atlantic Triangulations - a film series. This work is another layer of the complex expressions and ideas. You reflected a bit on your archive and piecing it together. What process and materials did you draw on? Was it a time of clarity or chaos?
TM: Definitely a time for clarity because in this work I’m touching on so many topics and theories that are intertwined. It was really important for me to stop producing and look at what was already produced and how I wanted this production to be shown. The time during my residency at D6 was really important to go through all my videos and create a logic system. At D6 I started to use colour coding and diagrams to connect the films to the topics and bring in certain topics. I’ve also been assessing what kind of text I want to bring to each film and how the films connect. It’s like a web - it’s connected. It’s one size that makes the whole.
I was very lucky to have a mentoring session with Susan Thomson, who is an artist and director I chose to guide me in this new journey of making films. I started using editing software and thinking more about sound for these pieces.
AC: This notion of points of practice, slow practice and connection is all interesting. What’s next?
TM: My next chapter is evolving around the Kite Ballet series, a series that is part of the New Atlantic Triangulations research. In this series I’ve captured through still and moving images a group of kite runners in the Itapuã neighbourhood in the Abaeté area in Salvador, Brazil. This very special area is actively used for Afro-indigenous spiritual practices and for communal entertainment, like the kite runners. More than show, this is the use of the land without harming nature. I also address environmental issues in the work. I was introduced to the threat this landmark is suffering by the artist and activist Clara Domingas, who has been fighting along with multiple civilians, such as Pio Filho, and other grassroots organisations against the concrete colonisation promoted by real estate companies and government bodies. Part of this work will be presented as the culmination of my Masters in Art and Research Collaboration from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Ireland in a collective exhibition.
AC: Thank you so much Thaís.
Thaís’ recent solo show Rites of Care, Curse and Comfort is on at the Sirius Art Centre, Co. Cork, Ireland ended this October.
Find out more: https://www.thaismuniz.com/
With thanks to Thaís Muniz
Image credits
D6 studio images, 2024. Photos: Matt Denham | Artists social at D6 studio, 2024. Photo: Andrea Carter
Thaís Muniz, Atlantica series. Photo: Guilherme Malaquias | Thaís Muniz, Inner Space of a Future Memory #1, the | Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2023. Photo: Pati Guimaraes | Thaís Muniz, New Atlantic Triangulations Flag. Photo: John Beasley | Thaís Muniz, Kite Ballet. Photo: Antonello Veneri | Thaís Muniz, Take Me To The Land I Also Belong To. Photo: Antonello Veneri
Thank you to support from