Dragons – Community Constructions and Urban Metamorphoses

 

Open Letter: DRAGONS

Rio, Berlin, and everywhere in between. Dear Hélio Oiticica Art Center,
dear people who make the body and the city living matter—
I write with the desire to build dragons.
Creatures born from the rest, from the leftovers, from the sparkle that time insists on erasing.
With the hands of those who collect what has been left behind, I want to create, together with other hands, bodies that burn, dance, and reinvent themselves.

Dragons are philosopher’s stones in motion.
They are born from the mixture of what has been lost and what still pulses.
From raw materials — paper, plastic, metal — magical bodies emerge, forged by the heat of collaboration.
The gold we seek is not metal, it is encounter.
It is the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary, of discard into desire, of dirt into symbol.
I propose an open residency: a space to breathe, invent, and sew worlds together.
I want to occupy Hélio Oiticica not as an isolated studio, but as a collective womb, an alchemical laboratory of transformation. Together with Pimpolios da Grande Rio, with its recyclable materials and carnival power, I want to bring community dragons to life—beings made of cardboard, plastic, fabric, memories, laughter, affection, and sweat.
Dragons that belong to no one, but belong to everyone.
Dragons that are born from trash and fly through imagination.
Dragons that do not burn cities, but ignite people.
During the process, I want to open the doors, invite anyone who wants to participate—children, neighbors, artists, curious people, passing bodies, observing gazes. Hold workshops, performances, small conversations that become movement.
And, in the end, transform the top floor of HO into a collective ritual—
a flight, a chorus, a gesture of celebration and reconstruction.
What I desire is public alchemy:
to transform weight into lightness, waste into relics, matter into spirit. Each dragon will be a communal philosopher’s stone—
the result of the fire of conviviality and the patience of the process.
That is why I am writing this letter — not only as a proposal,
but as an invitation,
as a spark,
as a promise of a fire that warms and does not destroy.
With affection and alchemy,

Lola Lustosa

2025

 

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