Discover Guilherme Morais' Profile

Guilherme Morais: I come from Brazil, from Belo Horizonte. It's a big and old city that is famous for its dance companies. It's also a very religious and conservative city. I came to Berlin in 2015 to do a residency at Ponderosa. This was my first time in the city, and my neighbour at that time is my husband now. We met by a coincidence, a destiny! We were going back and forth between Berlin and Brazil, but when Bolsonaro won the presidency, I moved to Berlin. 

Inky Lee: I'm curious to hear about your piece, Lovers against Lions, as it's an ongoing work for many years in different cities.

GM: The work has been being performed for ten years now. It started with the World Cup in Brazil. There was this funding that called for artists to present works for the World Cup. Since I was against the World Cup, I thought I wouldn't do it. But then, I changed my mind and decided to use this money to do something meaningful. Since the beginning of the World Cup, a lot of people, most of them artists, including myself, were on the streets to protest against it, and the police were throwing bombs at us. It was a huge mess on the streets. So, I wanted to go to the streets and create a barrier of love, as we were dealing with lots of violence. The piece became about non-stop kissing while building tents. I thought that I could use the same language as the police to occupy the public space of my city. If they build tents to occupy, then we should do the same to reclaim the space. 

I decided to continue performing the work because I saw how we were increasingly getting used to wars, and also because we, a LGBTQIAPN+ community, still don't feel safe to share intimacy in public space. 

IL: How long was the piece the first time you performed it?

GM: It was two hours. But sometimes I also do a one hour version.

IL: Was it different with changing performers and cities?

GM: Totally. I think it's easier to say what was in common. As this work just happens without any announcements and because it doesn't have any performative movement vocabulary, people wonder, 'What's going on?' What I saw in almost every performance was that the racist, homophobes, and transphobes were the first ones to point their phone cameras at us and shout things like, "Look, this garbage in front of us…" But because we were doing a simple task, just kissing, with the passing of time, they got used to it. Gradually, they put their phones away and became curious if we could really build the tents while kissing. With the length of time, I think they stopped feeling threatened by gay or trans kisses and came to accept that it's just there. 

IL: It sounds like there was no situation that was very dangerous?

GM: It always feels tense in the beginning. But because we don't give the aggressive people space by stopping our action and confronting them… It's like life. You can continue with hate and we will continue with love. I think they get tired, because they didn't train to perform anger for so long, while we trained to perform love for much longer. They could point their fingers at us and talk to us, but we were just claiming with our bodies that we exist. This is what I really enjoy about this work: There is no talking about it, but only doing. It's this direct action that makes others feel something. 

IL: It seems simple, but is actually very hard to just do something for a long time. What do you wish for this work in the present and the future? 

GM: To continue performing it! And to encourage others to do it in their own ways, even in non-performative manner, so that it becomes common to have love seen on the streets rather than violence.

Published in November 2024. Text by Inky Lee.