Artist Talk | Sy Gomes | Nuit Blanche Toronto 2025
September 30, 2025
We’re thrilled to host the Brazilian artist Sy Gomes (she/her) for an artist talk at Underscore Projects on the evening of September 30th. Sy will be in Canada for the very first time, presenting a commissioned work at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2025. Her photographic and soundscape installation investigates the Travesti experience through multiple languages, blurring gender boundaries and reimagining how identity can be expressed.
Join us for an in-depth conversation where Sy will share insights into her creative practice and the making of her Nuit Blanche installation. She’ll share thoughts on her process, experimentation, and the intersections of sound, image, and identity. Following this presentation, she’ll be joined for a conversation with Renata Azevedo Moreira (she/her), who’s leading the South Etobicoke Nuit Blanche exhibition From here, there, everywhere. Renata is a Brazilian author, researcher, and curator based in Toronto and São Paulo. Queer, feminist, and postcolonial gestures inspire her curatorial practice, which centers on collaboration and inclusivity by striving to create space for connections between QBIPOC artists in different stages of their careers.
The talk will last an hour and will be followed by a short Q&A. Please stay longer to meet Sy and listen to her especially curated playlist!
When: Tuesday, September 30, 6:30pm to 9 pm
Talk: 7pm - 8pm
Language: English
Details: Free, but spots are limited – RSVP to save your spot
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear from Gomes during her one-week stay in Toronto, ahead of her Nuit Blanche exhibition at Humber College Lakeshore Campus!
About the Artist
Sy Gomes is a black travesti born in Eusébio, a municipality situated near the city of Fortaleza, capital of the state of Ceará, in the Northeast of Brazil. Dissolving the frontiers between humanity and nature, she has been making art for over seven years, integrating music, performance, video, photography, ritualistic installation, design and cultural production in her practice. With a history degree from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), she is currently pursuing a Masters in UFC’s Postgraduate Program in Arts (PPGArtes).
About Sy Gomes’s Project
Travesti is a Latin-American gender identity under the queer umbrella that carries a specific local meaning and impossible exact translation. The term was born in Brazil, a country that has consistently had, for the past 10 years, the largest number of trans people murdered in the world. Thus, instituting a methodology to maintain a life that is constantly under threat is critical. “See Me From a Distance” is an ongoing series, which has previously been presented as billboards, posters, and flyers. For this edition, Gomes collaborates with the artist KAYA to create an environmental soundscape, expanding the visual language into the immersive realm of sound to accompany five roadside signs with photographic and textual material. Non-literal translations into several languages create space for questioning and transmuting trans and travesti memories. In the audio, different narratives suggest a disruption of logical thinking, introducing the audience to an experience of gender rupture typical of Brazil.
About the Curator
Renata Azevedo Moreira (she/her) is a Brazilian author, researcher, and curator based in Tkaronto and São Paulo. Queer, feminist and postcolonial gestures inspire her curatorial practice, which focuses on collaboration and inclusivity by striving to create space for connections between QBIPOC artists in different stages of their careers.
She is the curator of the exhibition From here, there, everywhere at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2025. Her experience has been built through independent projects and work within art institutions such as museums, artist-run centres, and universities in Montreal and Toronto.
Renata obtained a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the Université de Montreal in 2021 with research focused on the entanglements between curatorial work and the creation of media artworks. She has worked as an Assistant Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, as well as the Head of Cultural Affairs of Ireland in Canada. She has recently started research about artistic practices engaging in queer and decolonial joy as a form of resistance, with an upcoming digital residency at Esse magazine in Montreal.
Renata’s writing (English, French and Portuguese) has been published in art magazines such as Border Crossings and Esse; in cultural websites like the Montreal-based Baron Mag, where she had the monthly exhibition review column L’art au rendez-vous; and in the book Imagining Futures of Experimental Media (2021).