Raiça Bomfim

I am based in Salvador, Bahia in Brazil. I move in the field of arts as a creator, producer and professor, traversing performance, theatre and literature. I am a PhD student in the Performance Studies Graduate Program at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Brazil. I hold a Master’s degree from the same department and I taught as an Adjunct Professor in UFBA’s Theatre School (2018-19). She is primarily interested in the intersections between body, city, art, woman, and witchcraft. I frequently take upon experiences related to voice as the starting point for my creative and educational processes, connecting meanings emerging from a poetics of water. My doctoral research project, Acts for a wild voice: poetic creations in the perspective of well-being, seeks to build an itinerary of coexistence and sensitive listening that expands the routes by which previously unknown voices within us can rise, sound out and integrate into our expression. As a poetic exercise, I want to establish spaces of relationship, excitement and listening with stones, water and plants, which coexist within the contexts of communities that “talk to the land,” chiefly those communities that preserve the ancestral ways of afro-amerindian cultures. 

I coordinate a Territory for Artistic Articulations called Gameleira Artes Integradas, which has led the conception and production of works such as TRISTES, LOUCAS E MÁS: Festival de Mulheres em Cena [SAD, MAD AND BAD: Festival of Women in Scene], which had its first edition in 2017, in Salvador (Brazil) and Oficina-ação LAVAGEM [Workshop-action CLEANSING], a creative project that, in each of its five editions, gathered around 40 women in an urban performance. I created and directed the shows Nua [Naked], in collaboration with Nirlyn Seijas (2019), Loucas do Riacho [Madwomen of the Brook] (2007) and Oféliasete saltos para se afogar [Ophelia: seven dives to drown] (2015), in which I also performs, always with a motivation to associate different creative languages. 

Between 2009 and 2012, I participated as an actor and creator in Grupo Alvenaria de Teatro, developing the scenic-performative projects Fogueira [Bonfire] (2011), and Butô de Bêbado Não Tem Dono [A Drunk’s Butoh Belongs To No One] (2012). I have published five books, 10 Pontes [10 Bridges], O que é uma casa? [What is a house?] (2012) and 12 Lâminas [12 Blades] (2013), the first three in collaboration with artist Vânia Medeiros and printed by Conspire Edições. Also, Sete saltos para se afogar [Seven dives to drown] (2017), released with the publishing house Pipoca Press and Festival de Ilustração e Literatura Expandido (FILExpandido). In 2020, I released my fifth book, Maré-cavala [Mare-tide] (2020), through Editora Gris, once more in partnership with FILExpandido. In 2019, I had my début as a soloist in the performance show Strip Tempo, directed by Jorge Alencar.