Diego Araúja

Diego Araúja was born in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil), where he works in the field of expanded, multidisciplinary art. His production is derived from literary writing and takes on a hybrid form between theater, visual and performance arts in which he performs the functions of director, playwright, screenwriter and visual artist.

In 2013, he began to conduct Aesthetics for a Non-Time, a process seeking to disseminate ideas on how to establish a qualitative time that enables the production of emancipated Afro-diasporic memories. In 2017, he founded the ÀRÀKÁ Platform with the artist Laís Machado, developing collaborative projects with the intent to establish a space for creation and connections between Afro-Atlantic artists. In 2018, he directed QUASEILHAS, the result of his transdisciplinary experiments based on his memories of growing up in a Black family and where he also experimented with the creation of oríkì’s (oral literature of Yorùbá origin). Also in 2018, he conceived a choreographic performance for the video installation A Marvellous Entanglement, by British artist Isaac Julien, and soon after participated in the artist residency at the Atlantic Center For The Arts (Florida, United States), during which he created the video installation Oríkì das Araújas (Oral literature of the Araújas). In 2019, he was invited by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent Brazil at the 56th Theatertreffen (Theater Festival), participating the following year in the Iberoamerikanisches Theatrefestival (Ibero-American Theater Festival) with his work QUASEILHAS and in an artistic residency at SAVVY Contemporary with Laís Machado.

Currently, the duo of artists is involved in the foundation of the International Creole Laboratory, a project that seeks to articulate points of contact between people from Afro-Diasporic countries to create a language that is not born out of trauma, developed from corporeal experiments and collective actions.

arauja.com