Rita Pinheiro

Rita Pinheiro is an actress, creator, playwright, and teacher. She is currently a PhD student in Artistic Creation at the University of Aveiro and holds a Master’s degree in Performing Arts, specializing in Interpretation and Artistic Direction, from ESMAE. She also completed the Performing Arts Management and Production course.
She began her artistic journey at Balleteatro more than twenty years ago and has since participated in numerous performances. She has worked in film, dubbing, and advertising and is the lead singer of the Rita Light project. In addition to acting, she writes regularly and teaches theater.

In 2021, she stood out for the creation, writing, and performance of the monologue “Camaleoa. From Body to Manifest”, an original production resulting from extensive research on the world of sex workers. The play premiered at the Helena Sá e Costa Theater.

Persistent in her beliefs and an activist against social inequalities, she finds in art a political voice used to amplify the stories of those living on the margins.

Doctoral project

Title
Museum of Emptiness: Satire and Accumulation in the Relationship Between Existential Void and Performance

Advisor
Cláudia Marisa (Instituto de Sociologia), Jorge Salgado Correia and Eduarda Neves

Abstract
Museum of Emptiness is a research proposal centered on an artistic practice that explores the relationship between existential emptiness and performance. Existential emptiness is one of the great challenges of contemporary times and has been explored by artists across different fields. However, in the performing arts, there are still few works addressing this theme (i.e., there is an emphasis on emptiness in terms of space, which does not directly relate to the existential issue referred to here). Museum of Emptiness explores the use of satire and artistic accumulation in spoken discourse to expose false promises of overcoming existential emptiness. The goal is to produce artistic responses that reveal new possibilities for using these practices in the exploration of major social issues.The project is based on a multi-phase strategy that integrates archive creation, experimental/performative and documentary exploratory work. The expected outcomes include performances that will be documented in an archive titled Museum of Emptiness.

Keywords
Existential void; Archive; Performance; Artistic research; Satire; Artistic accumulation.