Biography
Carolina Mendonça has a Master in Choreography and Performance from Giessen University in Germany and graduated in Performing Arts at ECA-USP in Brazil. Her most recent project is Zones of Resplendence (2023), that speculates around feminist perspectives on violence. It was shown at Beursschouwburg; in workspacebrussels’ Open Studios at Kaaistudios and as part of It takes a city festival. Sirens (2021) was an attempt to listen to the sirens chant as a collective practice and was shown at Belluard. Pulp- History as a Warm Wet Place (2018) in Mousonturm dealt with an intuitive archeology digesting the leftovers of the XVII-XVIII centuries. In useless land (2018), together with Catalina Insignares, she invited the audience to sleep while they read through the night. This project happened in many different contexts such as Maerzmusik in Berlin, Ferme de Buisson in Paris, Beursschouwburg in Brussels and Sesta in Prague.
Carolina was also one of the curators of NIDO (2022) together with Suely Rolnik and Victoria Perez Royo; of the Performing Arts Festival VERBO (2017) at Galeria Vermelho and of Temporada de Dança (2017) at Videobrasil, both in São Paulo. She develops a practical-theoretical research that she shares in workshops that deal with practices such as telepathy, levitation and deep listening, and that took place in institutions such as Exerce in Montpellier (Fr), Tabakalera in Donostia (Esp), NIDO in Rivera (Uru), HfmdK in Frankfurt (Ger), and Teerã National Theater in Teheran (Iran).
Carolina always builds her work in collaboration with other artists, such as Catalina Insignares, Marcelo Evelin, Marcela Santander, Dudu Quintanilha, Carolina Bianchi and others.
In residentie Something is Approaching
01.09.2025 – 01.09.2025
In this new work, Carolina Mendonça continues her investigation into violence — not in its immediate explosion, but in its afterlife. Something is Approaching looks beyond the moment of the violent act to trace its long-term effects: the way violence settles into muscle, shapes attention, distorts imagination. If Zones of Resplendence imagined an army rising against sexual violence, this new piece lingers with what violence implants in us: tension, rumination, a sort of damnation, a muscular readiness.
What if our muscles are not only sites of trauma, but also of resistance? What if they have been rehearsing — quietly, daily — for the moment of return? For the moment to fight back? What type of stories are stuck to our tissues that could be released by a single jolt, a sudden movement — a bullet?
This is a choreography of muscular dreams. Bodies that once froze begin to stir — charged by years of imagined confrontations. Ghostly bodies find a space where their haunting can pause. Dreaming becomes a kind of training — a rehearsal for defense. Choreography, a way of sharpening.