Relational Bodies: Possession and Exorcism in Artistic Practice
Project details
- University
- Basel Academy of Art and Design / Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures
Fall Semester 2024
Ludgi’s project explores the spectrum between exorcism, possession, and artistic practices, focusing on the artist Lygia Clark and the Macumba rituals from Brazil. It investigates the possibilities of how Macumba may have influenced Clark’s therapeutic work in performance art.
Central to the approach are the concepts of "decolonizing the unconscious," based on Suely Rolnik's work, and Macumba as a set of spiritual practices that foster a connection between humans and the enchanted invisible lives, as presented by Luiz Antonio Simas. The project seeks to blend and complicate these definitions through artistic practices that incorporate exorcism, possession, psychotherapy, and voice as a key element in ritualistic expression.
The research addresses Ludgi’s personal, complicated racial ambivalence: in Brazil, her country of origin, the artist is considered white, while in Europe, she is perceived as a person of color. This multi-layered identity shapes the project as a form of social and historical reparation—a collective exorcism of trauma linked to colonialism. The project aims to challenge and decolonize possible unconsciousness, touching the impossible and offering an alternative way to engage with collective memory and identity through artistic practice.
Supervisors
Prof. Dr. Ines Kleesattel and Prof. Dr. Amalia Barboza
Ludgi Porto
Ludgi Porto earned her MFA in Performance from ABK Stuttgart(2023, with a DAAD grant), studied at Kunstakademie Münster(2019, DAAD grant), and also participated in an exchange at Rutgers University (2013, CAPES grant). She was awarded the DAAD-Preis (2021) and a Deutschlandstipendium (2022), as well as PROAC funding in São Paulo, Brazil (2016).
Her work has been featured in projects at Theater Rampe Stuttgart (2023) and Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2021), and she was nominated for the EDP Arts Prize at the Tomie Ohtake Institute in 2018. With extensive teaching experience, Ludgi has worked at SESC Brazil (2017–2019), lectured at UNESP (2016–2018), and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2021–2023). She also published an article in FKW magazine in 2022.
Ludgi currently researches exorcism and possession rituals in artistic processes that merge and blend at the edges of spiritual practices, connecting the material with the invisible worlds.
Credits: Other Kinds of Now, 2023 - ritual by Ludgi Porto - Photo by Velentin Hennig