Meuroqueer artist and researcher from rural Minas Gerais
Juji is a neuroqueer artist and researcher from rural Minas Gerais whose practice spans sound, multi-media, and organic experimentation. Her work explores gradients and nuances beyond binary structures, informed by lived experience in environments shaped by heteronormativity and extractive economies. Her research on seeds as creative and political agents emerged through eco-political performances and residencies in Brazil, South Africa, and Patagonia Argentina, working with species capable of regenerating post-mined landscapes. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and she is currently engaged as both artist and facilitator in biennial and academic contexts. While her lived experiences are marked by environmental damage, social inequality, identity resistance, and political instability, her work does not begin from catastrophe. It is grounded in notions of affection, both as care and affect/being affected by, as resistance, and regeneration that allows life to be sustained under oppressive structures. From her ancestral roots, as non-binary artists of the Global South, she draws her work from decolonial, queer-feminist and eco-political thinkers, understanding the current global polycrises as what adrienne maree brown calls ‘imagination battle’, calling for small-scale practices of radical creativity where new horizons can be drawn towards living futures.