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# Pêdra Costa on Art, Tarot, and Resistance
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/pedra-costa-on-art-tarot-and-resistance/
- Published: 2023-06-06T22:34:51.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:37:50.000Z
- Description: “Queerness, art, and spirituality are integral to my identity, yet they do not confine me,” says the Brazil-born, Berlin-based artist.
- Author: Valentina Di Liscia
- Tags: Interview, Pride Month 2023, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 09:29 (2023, 2024, part 1)

***This article is part of* Hyperallergic**’***s*** [***Pride Month series***](https://hyperallergic.com/tag/pride-month-2023/)***, featuring an interview with a different transgender or nonbinary emerging or mid-career artist every weekday throughout the month of June.***

The Brazilian performance and transdisciplinary artist Pêdra Costa also describes themselves as a tarot reader and a "visual and urban anthropologist." Based in Berlin, Costa creates complex, layered works that reflect these multifaceted interests as well as their own nonbinary identity. Their concert series [*Solange, tô aberta!*](https://cargocollective.com/pedra/Solange-to-aberta?ref=hyperallergic.com) ("*Solange, I'm open*"), for example, which premiered in 2006, combines elements of Rio de Janeiro's [Baile Funk](https://www.latinolife.co.uk/articles/latinolifes-baile-funk-playlist?ref=hyperallergic.com) with the northern Brazil Technobrega genre as well as queer, punk, and other underground dance and musical traditions. It's one of several pieces in which Costa makes a gesture of resistance by embracing and emphasizing art forms that have been systemically suppressed.

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**Hyperallergic:** *What is the current focus of your artistic practice?*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2023/06/pedra-costa-3.jpg)

Pêdra Costa, "de\_colon\_isation part III: the bum bum cream," performance in Vienna, Austria (© Joanna Pianka 2017)

**Pêdra** **Costa**: I'm currently dedicated to enhancing my artistic performance, evident in my ongoing series [*de\_colon\_isation*](https://cargocollective.com/pedra/de%5Fcolon%5Fisation?ref=hyperallergic.com). I am venturing into art installation, incorporating performative activations, exemplified by my latest piece "The closet of deities" that will be featured in the exhibition [*Close\[t\] Demonstrations*](https://closetdemonstrations-gain.univie.ac.at/?ref=hyperallergic.com) at the Semmelweisklinik Centre for Arts and Culture in Vienna. Additionally, for the [Erste Bank Art Award 2023](http://www.studiodasweissehaus.at/erste-bank-award/erste-bank-art-award-2023/?ref=hyperallergic.com), my inaugural visual art accolade, I am crafting an art installation inspired by the 22 major arcana of the Tarot.

**H:** *In what ways — if any — does your gender identity play a role in your experience as an artist?*

**PC:** Queerness, art, and spirituality are integral to my identity, yet they do not confine me. I believe my artworks inspired the generation of radical queer artists in Brazil, where I incorporated the term (and action!) "queer" in the arts. My music and performance piece *Solange, tô aberta!* (2006) serves as a significant artistic reference for it. Moreover, my work "[de\_colon\_isation](https://vimeo.com/228368662?ref=hyperallergic.com)" (2016) critically examines the historical persecution of gender dissidents in Colonial Brazil, perpetrated by the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (1536–1821).

**H:** *Which artists inspire your work today? What are your other sources of inspiration?*

**PC:** I draw inspiration from a diverse range of artists and communities: queer artists, disabled artists, witches, QTBIPoC, and neurodivergent artists, as well as the collectives I actively participate in. My friends, who are artists and/or curators, play a significant role in fueling my creative drive. Moreover, I seek wisdom from the Global South and artistic embodied knowledge.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2023/06/pedra-costa-2.jpg)

Pêdra Costa, "The lady in white" (2015), performance in Ponta Negra Beach, Brazil (© Arthur Little)

**H:** *What are your hopes for the LGBTQIA+ community at the current moment?*

**PC:** My hope is that we possess a remarkable sense of community, political strength, and resilience, along with valuable wisdom and survival strategies to confront the reemergence of an enduring social model that seeks to undermine us.