Davi is naked, lying on the couch in a living room that isn’t his own. With his back to the black-mirrored television, his muscular body, shaped by his daily labor in construction, takes a fetal-like, curved position as if ready to be born. His head shows a shaved side, making his afro-styled hair stand out even more. In the painting, intriguingly, we also see a portrait of this same character on the wall above the couch, seen from behind, imposing and alone. In what appears to be a casual scene, young Davi merges into the lap of a relaxed woman reading a book, her body wrapped in bandages that form a kind of white dress. The woman is both creator and creature, mother and prostitute, painter and intellectual: she is visual artist Lia D Castro (born in Martinópolis, São Paulo, 1978).

Observing the intimacy of the moment, Castro asks Davi for permission to capture it. “I’m going to immortalize you in some way,” she tells him. Indeed, the image of a prostitute with one of her clients sheds the pornographic and sexualized gaze often directed at Black bodies. She uses her cell phone to photograph their reflection. The resulting image is now part of the painting series “Axs nossxs filhxs” (To Our Children) on display in “Lia D Castro: Everywhere and Nowhere,” her first solo museum exhibition, held at the Museum of Art São Paulo (MASP). Among the varied reactions of viewers, many feel a sense of recognition in the painting.

“At first, people often mistook this image for Michelangelo’s Pietà. But there’s no death here; nothing sacred either. It’s a very natural pose, something we all do at some point: holding our children, lovers, husbands, boyfriends, friends in our lap for a chat,” the artist explains. “You know an artwork is complete when you realize that, beyond its aesthetic function, it has a purpose of love, of helping people to love and to recognize themselves.”

In her 1983 book “Tornar-se negro: as vicissitudes da identidade do negro brasileiro em ascensao social” (Becoming Black: The Vicissitudes of the Identity of the Brazilian Black in Social Ascension), Brazilian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Neusa Santos Souza raises a disturbing hypothesis. Using “Black” and “white” as analytical categories, she concludes: “The Black person we discuss here is someone born into and surviving in an ideology imposed by white ideals, which they are pushed to embody.” The act of subverting this construct is at the heart of Lia D Castro’s artistic practice.

“What racists expect from us is the obvious [repetition]. I had to read a lot to avoid repeating racism, coloniality—I must have read around 300 books over the last five or six years. I’m a Black, trans, Amerindian person, but that’s not what the work is about,” Castro explains. “I’m speaking about the structure of racist whiteness.”

Among her theoretical references are the works of Martinican philosopher Frantz Fanon, whose texts she nearly memorized through extensive reading. A key figure in contemporary antiracist thought, Fanon uses psychoanalysis to describe racism as a form of repetition akin to an obsessive-compulsive symptom—an aspect that led Brazilian intellectual Lélia Gonzalez to describe Brazilian society as suffering from “cultural neurosis.” According to Gonzalez, in a nation predominantly composed of Black and Indigenous people, led by a white colonial ideal, racism has become a recurring, and its most insidious, symptom.

“I have a degree in visual arts and interned at some biennials [São Paulo’s International Art Biennial]. That’s where I understood how institutions construct the memory of whiteness,” Castro recalls. “The few pieces there depicting Black bodies were often derogatory; those people had no names. That’s why I became a speaker: to help people decolonize their gaze, feelings and cognition.”

As a visual artist, Castro works within genres and styles canonized by Western art history: figurativism, portraiture, still life, genre painting, interventions and installation art, just to name a few. However, her works evoke something both unsettling and magnetic, recognizable yet disorienting, all at once. By deftly avoiding the obvious while presenting immediately palpable images, her art seems to evoke—to use another psychoanalytic concept—what Freud described as the uncanny.

“My body is adaptable to listening.” By describing herself like this, Lia D Castro prompts those around her to dialogue. This resonates with Isabella Rjeille, the curator of Castro’s exhibition at MASP, who recalls her words: “Lia says, ‘I want to pass through the museum without being captured by it; I want my presence to shift the structure a little. It’s a sort of unlearning: institutions learn to be how they are. So it’s a process of unlearning that categorizing, hierarchical way of being.’”

Indeed, the presence of a unique artist like Castro in traditional Brazilian art institutions is not trivial. “Her work brings very specific perspectives: working collectively; aligning sexual work with artistic and intellectual pursuits to develop a language; assigning meaning to each detail—the signatures of the men she portraits (signed by the characters themselves), the materials used (paint, bandages, bodily fluids); using both the front and back of the canvas; discussing both Blackness and whiteness; reflecting her body’s transition through hormone therapy. These are complex layers that the official history of art has not represented in this way,” argues Glaucea Helena de Britto, assistant curator of the exhibition, justifying the inclusion of the artist in MASP’s curatorial program dedicated to the annual program Queer Histories in 2024.

Equally unusual is the presence of an artist like Castro in major galleries across Brazil. Jaqueline Martins, co-owner of Martins & Montero art gallery in São Paulo, became the artist’s first formal representative. “[Lia’s work] has an existential quality,” Martins explains. “It’s about our urgencies—in the twenty-first century, in 2024—yet the themes are universal: it’s about being in the world, about humanity and all its complexity. [My interest in representing her] was immediate.”

Their discussions spanned a year and included not only studio visits but also extensive conversations and book recommendations. With the opening of the exhibition “Cumplicidade Refletida” (Reflected Complicity) in February 2023, artist and gallerist formalized their partnership. Although it wasn’t an immediate commercial success, the exhibition marked the first acquisition of one of Castro’s works by a private collector in Italy. Now, after solo shows in São Paulo and Brussels, a collective exhibition at the S.M.A.K., the municipal museum of contemporary art in Ghent, Belgium, the participation in art fairs, and acquisitions by major private collections in Brazil and Europe, the average price of an artwork by Lia D Castro is around €20,000 (US$21,700). This impressive acceptance in the international art market comes less than two years after she earned formal representation.

Unlike most U.S. states, Brazil maintains an abolitionist stance toward prostitution. While sex work is not criminalized, there are no legal codes or regulations governing the profession, sparking heated debates within society, particularly within women-led social movements.

“When I began sex work, I knew what I wanted: to use prostitution as a tool for understanding men,” Castro recalls. This approach enabled her to conduct extensive research on masculinity—particularly among white, heterosexual, cisgender men—by questioning them during paid encounters. Questions such as “why do you seek a trans sex worker?” or “when did you first identify yourself as being heterosexual? And as white?” are a few that led to reading recommendations, further conversations, and additional sex sessions with her clients.

“It was through sex work that I realized I could be anything I wanted. With each man, you’re a different woman, which gave me immense sexual and intellectual freedom,” she explains. Freedom comes with self-care techniques, like introducing herself to the police officers who patrol her neighborhood and explaining who she is and what she does.

Asked where her courage to face the risks of sex work—on the streets or online—comes from, she is firm: “From fear.” Uncannily, her reply echoes the words of singer Nina Simone interviewed in the 1970s: “Freedom for me is no fear!”

“Lia D Castro: Everywhere and Nowhere” is on view at the Museum of Art São Paulo, Avenida Paulista, 1578, São Paulo, through November 17.