The Circle of Filigree Gold Beads: Historical Connections between Bahia and Viana do Castelo
January 18, 2026, 4 p.m.
Bahia Art Museum (MAB), Salvador
Vila Ocupa o MAB Program, Vila Velha Theater
The Bahia Art Museum hosts The Circle of Filigree Gold Beads: Historical Connections between Bahia and Viana do Castelo, an unprecedented performance by Portuguese artist Rita GT, created in collaboration with the Cantadeiras Ohùn Obìnrin (Bahia, Brazil) and the Cantadeiras do Vale do Neiva (Minho, Portugal).
The performance offers a critical reflection on the circulation of gold in the colonial context and its economic, symbolic, and physical implications, with a special focus on women on both sides of the Atlantic. Starting from the encounter between women—their voices and bodies in relation to each other—the project calls on them as active protagonists of memory, transmission, and resistance, rejecting narratives that reduce them to merely illustrative figures in history.
On stage, the Minho-based group of traditional singers and storytellers Cantadeiras do Vale do Neiva — whose trip to Bahia was made possible through a community crowdfunding initiative — meets the Bahian collective Cantadeiras Ohùn Obìnrin, a group of women who are guardians of Afro-Brazilian oral traditions. Voice, polyphonic singing, gesture, body, and ornamentation construct a ritualistic performative device, in which listening is affirmed as a political action and shared presence multiplies narratives, opening space for new possibilities of relationship.
The project establishes a dialogue between Minho filigree and Creole jewelry from Bahia, understood not as simple adornments, but as political materials. The formal delicacy of filigree condenses the historical violence of gold mining and the technical sophistication that sustained colonial economies. The body that sustains it becomes a territory of historical inscription, exposing the relationships between value, power, and gender. At a time when gold is once again asserting itself as a store of value and financial refuge, the performance critically reinscribes it in the present, revealing how value continues to be extracted at the expense of bodies and territories. The ornament ceases to gild a single history and instead exposes it as a plural, fluid field enriched by multiple voices.
The artistic and historical research that structures the project was developed over more than two years between Portugal and Brazil, articulating contemporary art, oral traditions, and collective performative practices. The performance was consolidated and produced in the context of Rita GT’s artistic residency at the Sacatar Institute on Itaparica Island, where the project was selected. Founded in 2001, the institute is recognized as the oldest continuously operating artistic residency in Brazil.
Part of the Vila Ocupa o MAB program, this presentation reinforces the collaboration between Teatro Vila Velha and the Bahia Art Museum, affirming itself as an artistic gesture of historical recognition, symbolic reparation, and future projection. “Between shadow, crossing, and light, gold emerges as a symbol of wound and brilliance.” The performance creates a space for sharing and connection that extends into an open conversation with the audience.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Location: Auditorium of the Bahia Art Museum (MAB)
Date: January 18, 2026
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Address: Avenida Sete de Setembro, 2340, Corredor da Vitória, Salvador, Bahia
Admission: Free
Rating: All ages
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
Creation and artistic direction: Rita GT
Performance: Cantadeiras do Vale do Neiva and Cantadeiras Ohùn Obìnrin
Presentation: Teatro Vila Velha
Artistic residency: Instituto Sacatar (Itaparica Island, Bahia)
SUPPORT & SPONSORS: Directorate-General for the Arts (DGARTES) – Portuguese Republic | Culture; Instituto Sacatar; Government of the State of Bahia; Bahia Culture Fund; IPAC; Bahia Art Museum; Viana do Castelo City Council; Vila de Punhe Parish Council; Zet Galeria; ArtWorks, among other institutional supporters and private patrons.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
studio@ritagt.info
producao@teatrovilavelha.com.br
felix@sacatar.org
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rita GT is a visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice—which integrates installation, video, performance, and collaborative practices—develops around systemic issues related to collective memory, identity, colonialism, and human rights. Through images, words, objects, and performative rituals, she investigates the relationships between history, power, and the body, critically reflecting on the colonial past and its reverberations in the present.
With a consolidated international career, she has presented solo projects and participated in group exhibitions at institutions and galleries in Europe, the United Kingdom, Africa, and South America. In 2015, she curated the Angola Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale and participated as an artist in the Lagos Biennial and documenta in Kassel.
She is co-founder of e-studio Luanda and Kitanda Project, gastronomy and arts, and consistently develops collective creation projects, central to her artistic practice. She is one of the voices of Cantadeiras do Vale do Neiva, a collective with which she develops collaborative performances that reinterpret ancestral knowledge, domestic practices, and modes of intergenerational transmission. Among her collaborations, Unearthing (commissioned by Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom, 2021) and Pão, Vinho, Corpo e Sangue (Braga 25, Portugal, 2025) stand out.
