Itaporã, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, 1981 \ Lives and works in Brasília

Denise Alves-Rodrigues is a self-taught technologist, visual artist, and amateur astronomer. She began her art studies in Ribeirão Preto and holds a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from the Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo. She invents devices (electronic or not) and instruments dedicated to the research and production of faulty technologies, impure sciences, dubious theories, and useless methodologies. She has participated in various national and international residencies (KIOSKO, Bolivia; JA.CA, Ybytu, and Pivô, Brazil), as well as group exhibitions such as III Trienal Frestas (SESC Sorocaba, 2021), FARSA (SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, 2021), Iminência de tragédia (Funarte, São Paulo, 2018), Travessias ocultas (SESC Bom Retiro, São Paulo, 2018), Southern Revelries (IFAC_Arts, Athens, 2017), Art in Orbit (CAC, Quito, 2015), and solo exhibitions including Vocation to Ruin: proof of study (Darling Pearls, London, 2019), Há uma esfinge entre nós (Sé, São Paulo, 2019), and O vazio é todo meu (CCSP, São Paulo, 2020). She currently serves as the associate curator of the Chilean festival Toda la Teoría del Universo – Edition 23/24 and works as a Specialist in Devices and Artworks at SESI Lab in Brasília.

Denise combines practices considered magical, spells, and witchcraft—terms often dismissed by politics and hegemonic scientific methods—expanding and poetically overturning reflections on science and knowledge. Openness to error, the indeterminate, pseudosciences, or quasi-sciences is elevated by Denise as epistemological powers, sources, and methods of knowledge, just like rational scientific methods.