xxnft
Cibelle Cavalli
Mx. Cibelle Cavalli Bastos (b. 1978, São Paulo, Brazil) Non-binary, They/Them pronouns.
Artist, musician, independent researcher, educator and activist.
Lives and works in Berlin.
Graduated in 2015 from the Royal College of Art, London. Released four music albums worldwide under "Cibelle" for Crammed Discs and has performed and presented work in Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin-DE), ICA (London-UK), MASP (São Paulo-BR) Carnegie Hall (NY-USA), LCCA (Riga-LV), CAC Wifredo Lam (Havana-Cuba), Steirischer Herbst ( Graz-Austria), MdbK Leipzig (DE), Transmediale/Haus der Kulture der Welt (DE), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (DE), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), NRW-Forum Dusseldorf (DE) and collaborations within the 28th /31st São Paulo Biennial (SP-BR) alongside Yonamine and Tiago Borges, and as a member of assume vivid astro focus (AVAF).
In the recent years, Cibelle has participated as a guest lecturer, visiting tutor, and panellist and given workshops at Stanford University Fine Art Department, The Graduate Center City University of New York, Goldsmiths University of London´s Fine Art MA, Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut under the Unsettling program, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, the Royal Academy of Art The Hague, FHNW in Basel, Berlin Program for Artists
Cibelle Cavalli Bastos's inter-platform and transdisciplinary practice as research engage with the changing conceptualisation of identity and performativity, pictorial communication, creative labour and the propagation of behavioural patterns in the digital age.
It observes the challenges to perception and cognition under white-supremacist cis-hetero-normative patriarchal psyche turbo-powered by platform capitalism and explores how counter-discourses, behaviours and technologies, that challenge dominant narratives around sociopolitical issues, can be embedded or used as a form of resistance against the propagation of algorithmic behaviour both AFK and the digital sphere.
All works intersect purpose, occasion, and site-specificity expressed interdisciplinarity through performance-related work, physically and metaverse based immersive installations, Augmented Reality, Machine Learning, AI, as well as traditional art disciplines such as painting, ceramics, sculpture, video, photography, music and text.
Which was your first NFT ever?
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It was a an animation of 3 watercolours of mine combined. It said Oooooh and laughed.
Which is the last one?
It was Sonja Loves You, it’s a video that is part of my Sonja Khalecallon in Las Venus Resort Palace Hotel, and it was also a part of the installation I shown at OÖK in Linz back in June for the Non-Fungible Body exhibition.
How did you start your career in crypto art?
I have a carrier in fine art, putting work on chain is just another part of being an artist. I don’t differentiate art by which carrier it is commercialised with. Crypo is a vehicle and not a medium.
I started in art back in 2008.
How can we increase the involvement of women in crypto?
I think it’s important to increase the involvement of gender minorities people in crypto and not just women. Most of the times when I read about incentives for women in crypto it feels as though people are only referring to cis women and many times misgendering non-binary people in the process. The issue of inequality goes beyond those who identify as women, it affects basically anyone who is not a cis man and in this way all I cans ay is collect art by all people, not just cis men.
Last project?
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Subjective Consistency is the one where I’ve been spending most time in.
What are the main guiding principles behind your work? Can you step outside yourself for a moment and let us know what you see?
My work engages with the changing conceptualisation of identity, pictorial communication, creative labour and the propagation of behavioural patterns in the digital age. More so, I’m concerned with the relationship between ontology, epistemology and axiology when it comes to our encounters with an image, an object or a person.
Do you get any particular source of inspiration for the visual styles of your works e.g. do they arrive in relation to the place (physical, psychological, or situational) you were located at the time?
I don’t think or make art from a retinal perspective. I’m sensation and goal oriented, and the goal is usually to uncover what the subconscious is pointing to in relation to my research and that leads to imagery.
Can you dive a bit into the technical aspects of the works? Software or hardware used (in the wide sense; it could be thoughts and bodies), as well as the editing process? What are some of the particular challenges you and your team have faced in realizing the works?
I am very fluid with my materials, be them physical or digital. I have a curious mind and I go prodding things around, fusing them, merging, melting, in the literal sense physically and in the metaphorical sense digitally also. It’s expressed in the way I interweave workflows, push software, AI and ML models.
My main challenge is keeping my hard drive tidy.
Can you tell us about the relationship you want or aim to have with the viewer? What is the underlying approach to this relationship?
I want to tacitly get people to move beyond reading everything and everyone by form/aesthetics alone, and with it, question value systems, for labor, class, status, taste and so on. I wanna point to the beauty of the inconstancy of being a person, to elevate plurality in being, in artistic output. I want to facilitate access to being present, even if sometimes it may be by shock or humour. Nothing makes sense, it’s better to “sense” and flow, and in that relate as such, not so much with sussing out everything using our conditioned minds.
Tell us a secret about your work. Even a small one.
I don’t have any, I always tell all.