Interview with Myra Gomes
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: I’d like to know a little more about you—where you live, where you were born.
Myra Gomes: Oh, cool! Well, I was born in São Paulo, the capital. I was born in the Guarapiranga neighborhood, specifically in Jardim São Francisco, right next to the Guarapiranga Reservoir. I’ve lived in just about every possible place in the South Zone—I’ve lived in Americanópolis, Jabaquara, Vila Mariana, and Jardim Ângela. I also lived in Grajaú, which is where I moved on my own when I left my parents’ house. I currently live in Guarulhos.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: Tell me a little about your childhood, about the things you liked to do and listen to.
Myra Gomes: My childhood was all about moving around, so I don’t know if I’m particularly attached to any one place, and I also don’t know if I have many memories of a specific place from my childhood because that’s just how it was—I moved around a lot, so I’m always on the move, and that’s where my strongest memories are… moving… The rent went up every year, so every year we moved. That life, you know? The life of the “little girl” from the outskirts.
I was a trans child, so I had a lonely childhood, a difficult childhood at school. School was terrible for me. But I’ve always loved art.
One very important thing to mention is that, thankfully, I’ve always had a father. And a present father, believe it or not. My dad didn’t “go out to buy cigarettes” when I was a kid, so he was always very present in my life. He taught me a lot about music, so my dad would always pick up the guitar and we’d sing every MPB song he liked, like Elis Regina, Djavan, and Milton Nascimento. I think my musical tastes stem from that.
These days I’m obsessed with Liniker. And I’m listening to a lot of songs in Yoruba.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: When did you get started in theater and performance?
Myra Gomes: I spent a good part of my life in the evangelical church, the Assembleia de Deus, and that’s where I started doing theater. Even though those were somewhat dark times, I began my artistic journey through religion. I started doing theater at church and performed in every Sunday service; the pastor would look at me and my friend André and say, “Look, I need someone to do a skit today.” We’d go up—André and I—to the little room upstairs, and in half an hour we’d put together a scene and perform it. I stayed in the church for a long time—I think my entire adolescence. I was hooked on the church, and I believe that’s what saved me, what kept me alive. When I left the church, I started taking vocational courses, and here I am today.
I’ve put my theater course on hold, but I started it through the distance learning program at ECA, the University of São Paulo (USP), and we created a scenic and audiovisual installation, and it was during the audiovisual work that the performance was born. My research is being developed with the magnificent support of Obìrin (Production Company), which is working alongside me on this research and also on this movement.
I was so happy when I received that message in the group, on the group’s Instagram, talking about the possibility of this exhibition abroad—that even though it’s online, we’re reaching other places, so that’s really interesting. I’m also very, very happy to know that this exhibition will feature other artists and that all across Brazil, people are showcasing their art connected to their respective religions.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: I really liked what you said about art and religion being intertwined. They end up being interconnected—they aren’t separate, but not everyone sees it that way, so I thought it was interesting that you started from that perspective. With that, I’ll move on to another question: I’d really like to hear from you about how religion influences your art and how art influences your religion. Can you tell us more about the play *Ebó de xùxú* and its religious context?
Myra Gomes: First of all, it’s important to start by saying that Ebó de Xùxú is like this great tree trunk, and from it come its branches, twigs, and roots that extend into other types of work. Ebó de Xùxú begins with this movement, with my dysphoria, with the dysphorias I experience as a trans person; so it was born from the idea of transforming my dysphoria into art through my xuxu, which is this thick hair that grows here on the chin, on the face, all over the body, and which is popularly called, in the Pajubá language—the language that transvestites use, or rather, a dialect spoken by transgender transvestites in Brazil—the xuxu appears in the ebò amidst this dysphoria. So I wanted to turn into art what was causing me to suffer, and so there is the short film that was shot at USP, which is where I perform the act: I run a razor across my face, in front of the Dean’s Office, in front of the FFLCH —the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters, and Human Sciences—I walk all over USP, releasing my dysphoria from those crossroads, and that is how Ebó de Xùxú was born.
The idea comes from the research on the crossroads, which is why it’s called “ebó”—a ritual performed at the crossroads. And the crossroads is the focal point where these entities, these forces, and these transancestral beings dwell. We work with these ancestors little by little and more deeply as the work progresses, so the research begins at the crossroads, begins in the xuxu, in the disforia with my entry into Jurema. In Black Jurema, Obìrín and I, we are part of the same Candomblé house, which is also the same Jurema house led by the juremeiro Venâncio and the juremeira Ana Paula, who is our mother of saints, our holy part, and it is Black Jurema—the catimba of Black Jurema, Mestra Maria Melo—the name of our Jurema catimba house. I understand and discover that my ancestors are much more present than I imagined, right? So the dilemma is ancestral reclamation—that is, where we reclaim our ancestry, and where we learn a little more about them, right?
So my connection to religion and the way religion intertwines with my art—it gets messy like that; it starts to blend everything together. So I think the research goes deeper and deeper; it stops being research about my dysphoria and becomes research about my transancestrality at this crossroads, right? so everything happens at the crossroads; the crossroads is the mouth that eats everything, chews everything, vomits everything, and brings us these trans-ancestors like Mestre Maria Anália—and it doesn’t stop there. It’s also important to mention that besides Mestre Maria Anália, there’s Maria do Bigode, there’s Mestre Bernardo, who is a trans man, right, who also lived there, with catimbozeiros and catimbozeiras—they died, were enchanted, and became mestres.
So we realize that ancestry really does open up this spectrum, really does open up this universe, to many places, right?
So, with all that in mind, I began to connect and intersect my art with what I was doing in this research—on Ebó de Xùxú, on dysphoria—and to broaden my scope to explore ancestry intersecting with African-based and Afro-Indigenous religions, right? especially Jurema, which is the religion most present in this place, allowing me to access the history of these masters and mistresses, to feel the history, and even to converse—because, as I said, with these masters and mistresses, when I saw Maria Navalha for the first time, I was so moved I couldn’t even speak to her; I wanted to say: I’m a fan, you’re a trans woman who died and is still alive, who lives and is right there, speaking, and evolving—and it’s so moving.
In Jurema, this is much stronger because of the masters; so, by talking with the masters and learning about their history, we come to see that everything is connected to our ancestry. And so, with Jurema and this discovery of the ancestry that’s present in our lives, with all of that, I get to know my trans-ancestors who are in Jurema, right? Like Maria Natália, and Mestra Maria Navalha, whom many will know as a streetwise woman from Lapa in Rio de Janeiro, we know her in a different way, right? We know her as a trans woman from Recife, from northeastern Brazil, who lived there in the twentieth century and lived on Rua da Guia, worked on Rua da Guia, died, and was enchanted; in life she was a catimboseira, so in life she taught Jurema, which is a Northeastern religion with indigenous roots, born in the villages and brought to the city as a way to spread this knowledge, and Maria Navalha—she’s living there in Vila da Guia, dies, becomes enchanted, and turns into a gourmet master—so my discovery of understanding Maria Navalha as a master who comes today in the bodies of the people who are part of the religion, and who is a trans woman, opens up a universe in my mind; beyond discovering threats to validity, I understand and discover my own transcendence within Jurema.
So, the intersection of my art with all of this—the way my art connects with all of it—is that when I say art isn’t separate from religion and vice versa, it’s because I believe it all lies within that intimate, personal, poetic realm, you know?
It’s all in that realm where we bring into art what we want to show the world because, for me, art is a vehicle for telling stories and talking about things and raising questions, for bringing up for discussion things we don’t usually discuss, so religion, for me, is being incorporated into art in a safe, meaningful, and responsible way.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: What was your research process like for creating the play *Ebó de xùxú*?
Myra Gomes: It's just getting started—this is our first collective project where we’re researching religion within art and exploring the ancestry of these religions, with a lot of support from our Juremeiro father Vênus, who is also a researcher of transancestrality in Afro-Indigenous religions, so he also researches transancestrality in these religions and has been a huge support to us in this project. We take this research and bring it into art, and our father? He has a much more academic approach to understanding it, and we take that into art and transform it into poetry and transform it into art.
The work that is beginning now is very recent; it begins at the crossroads. The ebó de xùxú, between the razor and the crossroads, stems from the urbanization of this community and with general and emotional support from Produção Obìnrin.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: Could you tell me a little about the women who are performing in the play with you? Are they also from Afro-Brazilian religions?
Myra Gomes: They aren’t. Drica is sympathetic to the practice, but she doesn’t participate; I believe she doesn’t follow any religion. That’s why this question is so interesting, because I’m the one who takes on the role of speaking about Maria Navalha; the girls perform their own rituals—rituals for their loves and heartbreaks, for all their emotional turmoil—because that’s part of the work at the crossroads and remains there. In our work, there is an individual ritual for each of us, an ebó unique to each of us.
Mariê performs her ebó with a razor blade, with her razor, shaving her entire body and placing the hair inside a champagne bottle along with the hair that’s there—so it’s an individual performance by Mariê.
Tricka, on the other hand, gathers letters she wrote to ex-lovers, to people she loved, and while she sews a cow’s heart and drinks wine, people read these letters.
I’m in charge of talking about Maria Navalha. I think we were also careful not to put words in their mouths that they don’t carry, that they might not understand, that they don’t know, that they aren’t, that they aren’t a part of. As a catimbozeira, and also as a member of Jurema’s house, I have the honor of speaking about Maria Navalha, of embodying this master in the show. Maria Navalha enters, but so does Myra, who is wearing a hat and dress and singing the song she sings. So, since the girls aren’t part of the religion, we don’t put religious lines in their mouths—we’re careful about that.
The work is about the Jurema religion, but it’s also about transancestrality, so we talk about our ancestors who lived there in the 1980s, during the military dictatorship, and the intersections of that dictatorship with Operation Tarantula and the razors that were used at the time as instruments of both self-harm and self-defense—because many trans women back then would cut their necks and wrists to avoid being beaten and, in doing so, also try to defend themselves; people were afraid of blood because of HIV, so we talk about these other things too—that is, the broader work beyond just Mestra Maria Navalha—so these girls are part of this core, so to speak, of this space for talking about these other trans ancestors who didn’t become entities.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: Could you tell me a little more about how the show came together and what other projects you and the group hope to pursue as a result?
Myra Gomes: We’re in the middle of this process. As we’ve already mentioned, we’re trying to understand how Ebó de Chuchu would evolve into a group—and we’re building not just one piece, not two standalone works, but a combination of these because, for example, we’ve already made a film, and it too went through its own processes—processes of discovering a new Myra, for instance. We had the first recording at USP, and then, years later, we made new cuts for this film with another artist, with different perspectives, but a collage of the same research development. And so at this moment, we’re trying to circulate the materiality we already have as a process still in development. And we’re also entering into some selective processes for the construction of this work between razor and crossroads, in its complete form, because we understand today that we’ve developed a process of research and performance, but the idea is to transform this work into a more complex dramaturgy, into a work that requires a structure we don’t have today, and so it is on this path between what we can do with what we already have, to meet these higher expectations we have in the construction of this work.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: I’d also like to hear from you about how you create your work—not just in terms of the performance itself, but in terms of the materials. Do you use notebooks, pens, video, self-recordings, fabric—what do you use in your creative process?
Myra Gomes: Tears and a little beer (laughs). Look, I really have this creative space in my imagination, and in that space where I imagine aesthetics, where I picture the scene in my head—it’s a little crazy because sometimes I’m alone and then I start talking to an invisible person, and in that process I create the lines, and I write them down, but it doesn’t always turn out exactly as I imagined it in my head, though often it does. So it’s really important to connect with that place of imagination, to think about aesthetics, to think about the scene. I think I’m very much into visualization; I think I’m not very materialistic at the beginning of a creative process. I think I’m much more about the imagination—imagining the scene, imagining the light, imagining the positioning. Anyway, I think I’m already doing a little of everything at the same time, and then someone comes along and says, “Hold on, let’s take it step by step”—first this, then that. But lately I’ve been drawing, you know? I’m sketching out the spatiality outside the scene, making sketchbooks—basically, a notebook of what I imagine, actually scripting it out in drawings to later transfer to another sheet of paper or into Docs.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: Before we wrap up, I think it’s important to put the group’s description in writing—you’re a member, right?
Myra Gomes: We are the group “Ebó de Xùxú,” an interdisciplinary research group focused on Brazilian trans-ethnicity and contemporary society. Through our work “Between Razors and the Crossroads,” we present an ebó of resistance against dysphoria, the enchantment of staying alive, and the search for dignified perspectives on the future. Our cast consists of four actresses: Mariê Olops, Myra Gomes, and Tricka Carvalho. Production Direction and Executive Production: Obìnrin Ọdẹ. Executive Direction: Sayọ̀nà Prod Faveladas Productions.
Marina Oliveira Barbosa: Finally, you’ve already introduced yourself, but I’d like you to go beyond that introduction and describe yourself. How would you describe yourself? Not necessarily by looking in the mirror, but based on how you feel.
Myra Gomes: Well, here we go. It’s hard to describe ourselves—it’s really hard for me. I’m complex; I’m very complex. I think that describes me well, right? I’m full of complexities; I’m very paranoid. In my creative work, I’m very, very anxious; I don’t think it’s even paranoia—I think it’s anxiety. So I think I’m complex, anxious, and someone who can’t quite put my thoughts into words; I have to speak many times and repeat things to myself over and over to be able to express myself clearly. I feel like so much is happening at once; I feel like I’m at a crossroads. Wow, I think I described myself pretty well just now, guys! I am, and everything is happening at the same time, here at the mouth of the crossroads that is swallowing, vomiting, and chewing everything at the same time—I think that’s it, I think describing myself, I am a crossroads, where the wind blows strongly, where sometimes nothing passes through, where there’s a lot of information coming from many different places, and sometimes the street is empty, but other times the street is very crowded. Isn’t that poetic, huh?
Caption:
Ebò - A type of thank-you gift or offering made to fulfill requests addressed to orixás and entities of Afro-Brazilian religions. For this ritual to take place, one must make a request and offer food and objects, which are placed in clay baskets and left on the streets and street corners of the city.
Catimbó - Worship of Jurema, a religion that combines Afro and Amerindian elements. Smoke from pipes made from sacred herbs.
Transcestrais - A union of ancestors and transgender people
Interview by Marina Oliveira Barbosa for the Digital Brazil Project.
