
Cibelle Cavalli Bastos
Mendes Wood DM | São Paulo

Cibelle Cavalli Bastos’s first solo exhibition in São Paulo, “Mil Maneiras de Matar um Monstro” (A Thousand Ways to Kill a Monster), opened the night before the world’s largest LGBT parade took place in the same city. Appropriately enough, it embodied the London-based Brazilian artist’s farewell to old-fashioned gender and identity conventions.
Cavalli is a musician as well as an artist; hers was the main voice on the acclaimed 1999 album São Paulo Confessions by Suba (Mitar Subotić)she was just twenty-one at the time it was recordedand she has since released several albums under the name Cibelle. She’s also worked under a variety of pseudonyms such as Xanayanna Relux and Sonja Khalecallon, and while her studies were in painting, performative elements remain a constant in what she describes as a conceptual post-medium practice.
The exhibition opened onto a wall clad in

Artforum print subscribers have full access to this article. If you are a subscriber, sign in below.
Not registered for artforum.com?
SUBSCRIBE NOW for only $50 a year—65% off the newsstand price—and receive the print magazine plus full online access to this issue and our archive.*
Order the PRINT EDITION of the September 2016 issue for $17 or the ONLINE EDITION for $5.99.
* This rate applies to U.S. domestic subscriptions.