Video | Lola Lustosa

Lola Lustosa is an independent Brazilian artist, dancer/performer, filmmaker, sculptor, and puppet maker based in Berlin. Working across multimedia performance, video, movement research, ritual practices, sculpture, and improvisation, her artistic universe explores time, light, space, and the shifting perceptions of the human body. Through alchemy, craft, mythology, and experimental dramaturgy, she creates immersive worlds that invite audiences to encounter new forms of social memory, identity, and collective imagination.

Her work draws from a wide constellation of references: Brazilian Tropicalismo, Indigenous and shamanic knowledge, carnival culture, ancient mythologies, and contemporary underground crafts. These influences converge into performances and theatrical propositions that she describes as “theatre as a martial art”—a practice of confronting urgency, futurity, and the tensions that shape our social landscapes.

In recent years, Lustosa has expanded her practice into sculptural and puppetry-based performance, developing large-scale mythological creatures, masks, and kinetic structures that function as extensions of the human body. Working with recycled materials—often collected from samba schools and collective celebrations—she constructs hybrid sculptural forms that exist between object, costume, architecture, and choreography. In projects such as DRAGONS – Community Constructions and Urban Metamorphoses, these monumental figures become giant puppets that require multiple bodies to activate them, transforming sculpture into a collective organism. Acting as both sculptor and puppet master, Lustosa animates these creatures through ritual, procession, and choreography, creating living mythologies that merge carnival traditions, community participation, and contemporary performance. Through handcrafted materials and performative manipulation, she investigates the relationship between object, performer, and myth, transforming these figures into living sculptures that inhabit the space between ritual, choreography, and storytelling.

Lustosa has presented her work internationally in festivals, museums, theatres, and unconventional urban and natural environments. Her performances and films have appeared in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki, Rome, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Chandigarh, and at venues such as the Morni Hills Performance Biennale (IND), Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, ICI–CNN Montpellier (FR), CTM Festival (GER), Novas Frequências (BR), Rote Fabrik (CH), LPM Festival (GER), Lollapalooza (GER), Martin-Gropius-Bau (GER), 48 Stunden Neukölln (GER), Artistania e.V., Terra Xoxo, and Berlin Art Week.

Since 2011, she has collaborated as a producer and performer with the Plataforma Berlin Iberoamerican Festival, and as co-founder of Musterzimmer (2012–), she has contributed to the curation and construction of numerous events in Berlin. She is a member of the Artistania collective (since 2021), Masketiere (since 2022), and co-founder of Licht Nomaden (2023).

Her ongoing virtual performance EGO OPEN FOREVER, highlighted by Wall Street International, positioned her among the earliest artists to critically question social media as a system of ego management and identity construction—calling Facebook “the biggest ego manager in history.” This work launched her broader investigation into digital identity, social consciousness, and future imaginaries. Since 2021, her performances have increasingly expanded into open environments—streets, carnivals, festivals, forests, and backyards—blending ritual, movement, sculpture, and ecological interaction.

In 2023 she received support from Neustart Kultur for her research project Dance Under Control, during which she further developed her work as a puppeteer, puppet builder, and puppet theatre dramaturg, integrating sculpture, costume, puppetry, and choreography into hybrid performative forms.

She has collaborated with Arto Lindsay, Alexandra Pirici, Barbara Berti, Martha Hincapié Charry, Peter Goss, Serge Ivanov, Eemil Karila, Jarkko Räsänen, Mahir Duman, Mari Stockler, and many others.

Her works are part of the collection of TFM – Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft, Universität Wien, where they remain accessible for research and for future generations of artists and scholars.

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