Christina Elias
Artist and choreographer. São Paulo, 1978.
The idea of "passage" informs her research and practice. In her creative process, the body serves as a tunnel through which various languages—movement text, video, sound— pass. Her themes involve the "passage of time" and its consequences, such as the perishability of the material, the sublimation of the subjective in the chronological, and the usurpation of the individual by external vectors, as well as the "passage of space" while displacements, whether geographic, cultural, social, or migrations of the self to other non-places.
She holds a MASTER OF ARTS in Movement Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London, UK), a PhD in Design from Anhembi Morumbi University São Paulo (2020), and a Post-Doctorate in Communication and Semiotics – Arts of the Body from the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-SP, 2021).
She has undertaken various solo and relational projects in museums and galleries in Brazil and Europe, such as the Museum of the Portuguese Language ( Paulo), MAM-SP, MIS-SP, MAC-USP, MAXXI Rome, Studio Stefania Miscetti Rome, Radialsystem, and Uferstudios Berlin, among others. She has participated in performance and dance festivals in Brazil, Europe, and North America, including PLATAFORMA BERLIN, DANÇA EM FOCO RIO DE JANEIRO, MIRADA FESTIVAL IBERO-AMERICAN PERFORMING ARTS SESC SANTOS (BRAZIL), BUMP'N GRIND TORONTO, and has received some important awards, such as FUNARTE MULHERES NAS ARTES VISUAIS and Aldir Blanc - PROAC for HISTÓRICO DE CARREIRA. She completed an internship oriented by choreographer Sasha Waltz in the creation of the opera-dance Matzukaze (2010) and trained with various Butoh artists, including Minako Seki Yuko Kaseki (Berlin) and Tetsuro Fukuhara (Tokyo). Her works are included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo (MAC-USP), the Ribeirão Preto Art Museum (MARP), and the University Art Museum of the Federal University of Uberlândia (MUNA), as well as in the Luciano Benetton collection (Italy).
Currently, she lives and works in Lisbon, where she offers weekly contemporary dance practices (somatic focus) at cem-centro em movimento and the Cultural Association Maloca. She participates in the Group of Eastern Studies at PUC-SP, guided by Prof. Dr. Christine Greiner. She is creating two new works in dance/performance, one solo and one collective, set to premiere in 2026 in Portugal.
The body
Graduated in Classical ballet and modern dance by SIWA Ballet (São Paulo) and graduated from Largo São Francisco Law School (USP), she believed that writing and dancing were mutually exclusive activities. Later, in London in the context of the MA in Movement Studies, she became interested in techniques forcontemporary dance and somatic movement until finding Butoh, which she incorporated as a phisical and conceptual art of deconstruction of patterns, whether those of the dance techniques themselves or of society. During this period, she had the opportunity to experience the body practice of artists and movement directors such as Susan Klein, Helen Hislip, Ayse Tashkiran, Vanessa Ewan, Martin Gruber, Minako Seki, Yuko Kaseki, Simei Che. In 2011, she completed an internship as assistant director to German choreographer Sasha Walz during the production of the dance opera Matsukaze. In 2012, she met the artist and Butô master Tetsuro Fukuhara in Rome, with whom she maintains a constant dialogue and partnership. Since 2023, she has been practicing contemporary movement with choreographer Sofia Neuparth at cem-centro em movimento (Lisboa).
From these experiences, she expanded her understanding of movement and writing and developed her own method of body narrative. This method, which is called SACRO-CRANIAL EXPRESSION, has as its core principle the idea that all movement starts from the spinal column and that any movement in limbs or in space is a reflection of this. The sacral-cranial movement changes in quality, shape and consistency depending on the region in the spine in which it originates. This way of thinking about the body is based on the following movement techniques:
Bartenieff's Fundamentals_
Connections between parts of the body, with the environment, space and other people. Based on connectivity patterns of the body, this system suggests a process of rerooting through a regressive visit to movement development patterns, demystifying dualities such as inside and outside, intention and expression, wanting and acting, body and mind... and offers a clear understanding of how the body is our living instrument, always making connections. Through its application to movement, adults have the opportunity to choose to return to remember aspects of their movement that were forgotten when integrated into larger movement patterns in the normal process of growth and development.
BMC – Body Mind Centering_
Consciousness permeates the entire body.In this method, the premise is that the physical body and mind are a complementary unit. The two operate as linked systems to compose the entire body, in a continuous process without chronological or linear order. There is an abandonment of dualistic Cartesianism to understand that movement as well as thought emerge from the body-mind together and at the same time. Created by the American Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen more than 40 years ago, this method prioritizes the understanding and analysis of movement based on the systemic experience of the body and synesthetics of space.
Chakra theory_
Chakras are wheels or energy centers distributed along the vertical axis of the body.(from the base of the spine to the top of the head). There are 7 chakras that connect to 7 elements in the body that alternate in designing behavioral tendencies and different qualities of movement:
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7 – consciousness (thought)
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6 – intuition (light)
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5 – communication (sound)
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4 – love (air)
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3 – power (fire)
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2 – sexuality (water)
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1 – survival (earth)
Butoh_
The body expands outside the skin unlimitedly.Butô artists perceive their bodies and the environment as environments in a continuous flow of exchanges. The body is not just what is delimited and contained by the skin. For the vision of existence that permeates Butoh art, this idea of the body is just an illusion. Butoh body-mind training is a path to achieving a corporeal state of connectivity, in which imaginative processes mediate a dynamic web of relationships between individual and environment, between inside and outside the limits of the skin.
MINDSET - WELTANSCHAUUNG
A thought that illuminates practice
With works such as Bodies that Matter (1993) and Precarious Life (2004), Judith Butler has been pointing out how the body, in classical Western thought, became a ghostly figure, emptied through a process of exclusion in which representation replaces the object itself. The material body then becomes the result of the repetition over time of norms imposed by a phallocentric imperative and its materiality, an effect of power. Butler's theory was an impulse to look for new “discourses for the body” that did not mimic these constituted power relations, but that, on the contrary, sought to deconstruct them. I understood that body discourses are metaphorical, conceptual and political and that talking about the body from the body itself has a wide-ranging activist force.
Books I have read, am reading or want to read
ARENDT, Hannah. YUZAN, Daidoji,. WILSON, Bill. "On lying and Politics". Lybrary of America, 2022.
DELEUZE, Gilles. "Difference and repetition". Trans. Luiz Orlandi and Roberto Machado. Rio de Janeiro: São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2018.
DELEUZE, Gilles. "Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation". Trans. Roberto Machado. São Paulo: Zahar, 2007 [1981].
LE BRETON, David. "Goodbye to the body: anthropology and society". Campinas: Papirus, 2003.
BUTLER, Judith. "Bodies that matter". London: Routledge, 2011.
KUNICHI, Uno. Hijikata Tasumi: thinking about an exhausted body. Trans. C. Greiner and E. Filho. São Paulo: N-1 Edições, 2018.
CV
Christina Elias (São Paulo, 1978).
artist and choreographer
Member of the CID (International Dance Council, UNESCO)
Awards
2013 FUNARTE – Women in Visual Arts
2020 FUNARTE Respirarte Visual Arts
2020 Aldir Blanc PROAC Visual Arts
2020 Bump'n Grind Video and Performance Festival (Canada). Best activist film.
Public collections
MAC USP – Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of SP
MARP - Ribeirão Preto Art Museum
MunA - University Art Museum of the Federal University of Uberlândia
Private collections
Luciano Benetton Collection
Education
1995-2000 Degree in Law - Largo São Francisco Law School (USP-University of São Paulo)
2002-2004 Degree in Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies at the Free University of Berlin (FU BERLIN - not completed)
2011-2012 Master in Movement Studies at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London, United Kingdom)
2015-2020 PhD in Design from Anhembi Morumbi University (São Paulo)
2021 – Post-Doc PUC-São Paulo Communication and Semiotics - Art, Activism and Feminism
PERFORMANCES
2025 Performance Infinita 2 (NowHere Lisboa)
2025 MAKE UP (Casa Caus at Silenthome Lisboa)
2024 Writing with Exu. Writing with Iansã (SESC Pompeia, São Paulo)
2024 One minute diaries (Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade, São Paulo)
2023 Music Box (Museum of Portugues Language MLP São Paulo)
2022 By a thread (Lux Space of Art São Paulo)
2021 At night I cry. CLAREIRA MAC-USP (Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo)
2020 Every Woman (Paço das Artes, São Paulo)
2020 Performance Infinita (Supernova Arts, São Paulo)
2019 PELE. Artech Art and Technology Festival (Braga Portugal)
2018 Music Box. Studio Stefania Miscetti (Rome)
2017 Music Box (Paço das Artes, São Paulo)
2015 PER-FORMARSI: L’AZIONE COME FORMA DI PERCEZIONE (MAXXI National Museum of Art of the XXI Century, Rome)
2014 Phonetic Fragments of a Self Funarte Women in Visual Arts Award 2013 MAM (Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo); MIS (Museum of Image and Sound of São Paulo)
2013 Phonetische Fragmente einer Selbst (Ada Studio, Uferstudios, Berlin)
2012 Untying. With Paloma Rocha. Direction Minako Seki (Eden Studio, Berlin)
2011 Here and There [or Somewhere InBetween] (Radial System, Berlin)
PERFORMANCE AND DANCE FESTIVALS
2023 MIRADA Ibero-American Performing Arts Festival (SESC, Santos)
2022 LUX Performance Festival (São Paulo)
2022 PerformAR Performance Festival (São Paulo)
2020 Bump’n Grind Film and Performance Festival (Toronto)
2018 SheDevil (Studio Stefania Miscetti, Rome)
2016 Dança em Foco (Rio de Janeiro)
2015 VERBO (Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo)
2015 Transfusion (Casa Guilherme de Almeida Museum, São Paulo)
2013 Plataforma-Berlin (Uferstudios, Berlin)
2013 Boddinale – International Experimental Video Festival (Loophole, Berlin)
INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS
2023 Words and viscera. LONA gallery (São Paulo)
2022 The Book of Time. LUX art space (São Paulo)
2021 At night I cry. CLAREIRA MAC-USP (Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo)
2020 Absent Body. MUNA (University Art Museum – Federal University of Uberlândia)
2020 Cristina Elias: EVERY WOMAN (Paço das Artes, São Paulo)
2017 INSCRIPTURA: Performance, objects and video (Paço das Artes, SP. Project Season 2017)
2017 Cristina Elias. MUSIC BOX. Studio Stefania Miscetti, Rome
2015 PER-FORMARSI: L’AZIONE COME FORMA DI PERCEZIONE (MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome)
2014 PHONETIC FRAGMENTS OF A (SI) Funarte Women in Visual Arts Award 2013 MAM (São Paulo Museum of Modern Art); MIS (Image and Sound Museum, São Paulo)
2011 Here and There [or Somewhere InBetween] (Radial System, Berlin)
2009 SUSPENDED EPIPHANY (Casa Fernando Pessoa, Lisbon)
2006-2007 PASSAGENS DE LISBOA (High Commission for Immigration and Intercultural Dialogue, Lisbon)
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS
2025 Winter (CasaCaus, Lisboa)
2025 Falling leaves (CasaCaus, Lisboa)
2025 Acervo em movimento (Ateliê Alê, São Paulo)
2025 Radar Art (São Paulo)
2023 Um Céu - partnership with César Meneghetti (Ateliê Alê, São Paulo)
2023 Nowhere now (Ed. Vera, São Paulo)
2023 Artist's Notebooks (Lona gallery, São Paulo)
2022 From drawing the line to superficiality (Lona gallery, São Paulo)
2022 Unknown (Lona gallery, São Paulo)
2022 The body language (The room, Venice)
2022 Open archive (Lona gallery, São Paulo)
2021 Venice International Art Fair (The Room, Venice)
2021 London Contemporary Art Fair (The Line, London)
2021 Rome International Art Fair (Medina Art Gallery, Rome)
2021 MARP Ribeirão Preto Art Museum – Exhibition season
2021 Do you see me? Are you listening me? Digital Narratives. (Casa Niemeyer, Brasília)
2020 Interactions I (Lona gallery, São Paulo)
2020 Women Essence MUSA ARTS SPACE / UNESCO (Rome, Italy)
2020 Women on stage (Paço das Artes, São Paulo).
2018 Retrotopias (Occupation Edifício Madalena Laura, São Paulo)
2018 Asymmetric Crossings: Text and Movement (Atelier Alê, São Paulo)
2018 BURGOS #2 (FUNARTE, São Paulo)