Ode (b.1998) is a multidisciplinary Brazilian artist, who works with the realms of directing, styling, writing and curating, winner of the DRABL Artist Grant (2022) and of the Latin American Fashion Awards (2023) for Fashion Film of the Year. Her work integrates the collections of MEP – Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and the Photography Library of Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo.
Her work is constructed on foundations exploring how identity can be discussed without relying on the framework of academia from the Global North, itself a colonizing force. Her artistic production explores a wide range of themes including racism, transphobia, memory, therapy, Afro-Brazilian spirituality and transmutation.
In 2022, Ode released A Rose and A Prayer, her first photobook, published by zero-Editions, which posits that divine beings are amongst us – if only we dare to reimagine them.
Her filmography includes the short film When There Is No Sun (2024), on the darkness that we go through in order to find the light; Ascensão (2023), exploring the spiritual dimensions of love and community; and Divina (2022), about the legendary Brazilian travesti Marcinha do Corintho.
She curated at LUX in London the exhibition Notes on Travecacceleration (2021) – with a nod to American curator Aria Dean’s 2017 essay Notes on Blacceration, Ode posits that accelerationism has always been implicit in travesti identity –; the Nataal series From Brazil, With Love and Optic Games (2020-2021) on young Brazilian Black photographers; and, at 16, she created the digital platform focusing on Afro-diasporic and African art Dúdús (2016-2019).
Her work has already been featured on Vogue, Dazed, Perfect, SHOWstudio, Nataal, Manju Journal, Harper’s Bazaar and It’s Nice That and exhibited at Photo London, Untitled Art Fair, MEP – Maison Européene de la Photographie, 3537, MASP, Instituto Moreira Salles, Instituto Tomie Ohtake and LUX. Among her clients and collaborators are Comme des Garçons, Jean Paul Gaultier, NAMESAKE, COLORSxSTUDIOS, Samuel de Saboia, Ibrahem Hasan, Marco Ribeiro, Céu, Urias, Xênia França and Jota Mombaça.
