I’m grateful. First and foremost, grateful. It wasn’t easy to get here, and I know that I still have much to accomplish. Even though sometimes, when I look back, I can’t help but wonder where I could be if things had been different at the start. It was a tough, humble beginning. My father was a waiter struggling to feed his wife and five children—I was the oldest. Against all odds, growing up in a small town in southern Brazil, I was fortunate to witness him working his way up to own his restaurant, and to learn from my mother how to manage a household and care for my siblings. Thanks to them, I was able to be the first person in our family to attend college. But this was later on. Before college, there was school, dealing with years of bullying and physical abuse. As a teenager, I longed to escape, and I did. I’m grateful for that too.

In college, far from the family and municipal Catholicism in which I was raised, I could explore other ideas and beliefs like Tibetan Buddhism, which led me to draw inspiration from Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy later in life. French post-structuralism also shaped my thinking and art practice. Yes, art! For the past 20 years, art has become my political and spiritual way of being.

I majored in Social Sciences and earned a master’s in Media and Knowledge. During my 11 years as a student, I supported myself through various jobs. After graduating in 2003, I took my role as an artist seriously for the first time while also working as a college professor and in corporate roles, including founding an online university for a major airline company. I disliked the rigidity of academic and corporate institutions, but I invested 16 years of my life working in both environments while always pursuing and integrating into the art world in São Paulo. These were busy years that would not slow down. I didn’t know how to anyway.

Despite selling my work, being represented by commercial galleries, and winning prestigious national prizes, I was in agony. The most dreadful and ordinary agony among artists: praises don’t put food on the table, and I wanted a steady living from my art. Why not? I always achieved what I set out to do, but on the other hand, education and serving other artists have always been part of my mission. It became clear to me that it was also my “calling.” As I was being incorporated into the art world, I began mentoring other artists in a very unorthodox way, questioning the same system that was accepting me. Eventually, the system and I became frenemies for a while. It wasn’t fun, but looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me as an artist. I created a new structure to be an artist in service to other artists. I finally learned how not to rush and developed a pace and way of thinking that worked for me as an artist too.