Brazilian poet, photographer and sociologist based in Lisbon, Maíra Zenun (1982) defines herself as a multi-artist in transit. Born in Rio de Janeiro, she grew up between Petrópolis and Brasília, before moving to Portugal where she became a mother in 2018. She has a Master in Artistic Photography (IPCI/2022), with the work of hybrid photography Ashanti is at home, as well as a PhD in Sociology of Culture at UFG (University of Lisbon), with a thesis about the FESPACO, the oldest African film festival in Ouagadougou. In 2016, she founded in Lisbon Nêga Filmes: a collective of Black women artists and thinkers. An activist, she is one of the founders of the IMMUNE-Black Women Institute and is part of UNA-Black Art Union in Portugal. In 2017, selected for the Lisbon Ibero-American Capital of Culture award, she developed two works: The marks of the city are us and the performance The earth shook inside me and I became homeless. In 2019, she presented at the TODOS Festival, the autobiographical photo-poetic essay Paths travelled with affection. Her journey is marked by many multidisciplinary collaborations and co-creation projects, namely with the Collective FONTE in 2021 (Performance do Ser) and in 2023 (Corpo Ereto).
Project: Focusing on the train line to Sintra, Linha de Sintra is a project of performance / installation around the invisible borders in Lisbon, legacies of the colonial history.