Carolina Bianchi

Saturday 19 July, 12:00 noon
Ca’ Giustinian, Venice

La Biennale di Venezia will present the Silver Lion to the Brazilian performer, author and director Carolina Bianchi.

A leading figure on the experimental scene in South America, Carolina Bianchi settled in Amsterdam in 2020 and three years later became a sensation at the Avignon Festival with A Noiva e o Boa Noite Cinderela (The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella), the first chapter in the trilogy titled Cadela Força (Bitch Strength in Portuguese). The show received warm acclaim from audiences and overwhelming praise from critics. It was awarded as “Best Foreign premiere of the 2023/24” season in France, selected by the Le Prix du Syndicat de la Critique.
A performer, director and writer, in that piece Carolina Bianchi explored gender-based violence putting her own body on the line in a physical and psychological challenge that places her within the tradition of the most extreme experiences in female performance art, which extends from Gina Pane to Marina Abramovic, Regina José Galindo, Tania Bruguera and Ana Mendieta, for which Bianchi is opening new frontiers.

As Wayne McGregor states in the motivation for the award: “A leading figure in the experimental scene across South America and internationally, Carolina Bianchi is a performer, director, writer, and image maker extraordinaire, who often utilises the body as a central element in her work, creating highly personal, visceral, and choreographic experiences that touch and challenge us. Bianchi frequently explores gender-based violence by risking her own body through both physical and psychological challenges, firmly grounding herself in the tradition of female performance art while also critiquing it. She is pioneering new frontiers in this field. In 2023, Bianchi premiered the first chapter of her trilogy: The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella, delving into the profound horrors of sexist violence, akin to a descent into the deepest realms of hell, immersing us into a space where memories intertwine and become indistinct. As she evolves her sensationalist trilogy of works, Bianchi remains at the cutting edge of radical performance, reminding us of the essential need for such uncompromising, brave and compassionate new artistic voices”.  

The founder and leader of the multidisciplinary collective Cara de Cavalo from Sao Paolo in Brazil, Carolina Bianchi is the author of five productions: the Trilogy Cadela Força (2023/2027), O Tremor Magnifico (2020), Quiero hacer el amor (2017), Mata-me de Prazer (2015) and the short film Isolda (2021).
At Biennale Danza, Carolina Bianchi will present the Italian premiere of the second chapter of the trilogy Cadela Força: The Brotherhood.  A work that centres on masculinity and the male gaze, The Brotherhood will be performed at the Teatro delle Tese on Friday the 18^th and Saturday 19^th of July.

Carolina Bianchi (Porto Alegre, 1984) is a Brazilian theatre director, writer, and performer currently based in Europe. She has been working in theatre throughout her entire life.
Bianchi graduated from the Escola de Arte Dramática at the University of São Paulo, where she lived for fifteen years. During that time, she worked as actress, director, dramaturg, writer, and shared her research in theatre and performance practices with young artists trough workshops. Her work in Brazil was part of the independent scene, meaning that for many years, Carolina and her company operated without subsidies, which, of course, impacted her creations.
While in São Paulo, Carolina Bianchi developed her unique theatrical language, working collectively with various partners from dance, theatre, video, and music. Some of those artists would become constant collaborations, and part of Cara de Cavalo company, with whom she has being working together for more than 10 years.
Since 2015, she directs the collective Cara de Cavalo from São Paulo, with whom she most recently created Trilogia Cadela Força (Cadela Força Trilogy, 2022–27), O Tremor Magnífico (The Magnificent Tremor, 2020), Lobo (Wolf, 2018), and Mata-me de Prazer (Kill Me with Pleasure, 2016).
In 2020, Bianchi moved to Amsterdam for study at Das Arts, a Master in Theatre program. During this time, she began developing a long-term project: a trilogy called Cadela Força, which examines sexual violence (especially rape) and art history across three chapters. After her graduation in 2022, she continued working on the first chapter, The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella with Cara de Cavalo collective, until its premiere in July 2023 at the Festival d'Avignon.
Since its premiere, the Chapter I: The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella has toured major festivals and venues across Europe, receiving a warm reception from audiences and critics. The production and Carolina’s work has also been studied by leading universities worldwide, including Giessen University in Germany and Harvard and New York University in the United States.
The show was awarded “Best Foreign Premiere of the 23/24 season” in France by the Le Prix du Syndicat de la Critique. The text The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella was published by the French publisher Les Solitaires Intempestifs in 2024.
Writing is at the core of her practice as a theatre maker. In her texts, she combines long personal monologues with poetic descriptions of situations on stage. She often channels the voices of other writers—most of them long deceased—with whom she is obsessed with, as if they form a kind of genealogy for her life. Her writing is filled with anguish, constantly seeking words to express the extreme violence of the world, the loneliness, fear, her sexuality, and her obsessions with art and its paradigms.
In her works, the body of the performers always appears as a disturbing presence crossing some kind of extreme journey, full of desire and contradiction, carrying an enigma, as  a constant search for another language, another logic that can bring out senses subversive to the order, that allows other forms of relationship between the visible and the mysterious, manifestations of evil, romanticism and art, memories of sexual traumas and desire. Her staging is a combination of references from literature and painting, focusing on violence through text and bodies that incarnates sensory and performative gestures in a constant friction between an exacerbated theatricality and a radical performativity.