Born in 1975 in Belo Horizonte (Brazil) Benjamin Abras is a contemporary artist with an interdisciplinary approach, developing his works on a transversal track. Actor of theater and cinema, Afro traditional and contemporary dancer, director of dance and theater, poet, essayist, playwright, visual artist, singer and composer.
He has performed and directed in almost all of Brazil and across three continents Africa, Asia, Europe for 23 years. His work is based on the constant hybridization of languages in the creation of a questioning about the relations between time and contemporary space under the afro-diasporic philosophies establishing them as another way of human relation that not only identity as a fixed place, but a crossroads for other possibilities of philosophical reflection.
Since my arrival in Tunis, the support of the Art Veda association in connection with my artistic residency in Artists at Risk has been of extreme care and respect for my culture and my way of life as an artist. They worked hard to give me a basis to be at peace and save, so that I could freely develop my research for my new book. They made it possible for me to visit an independent arts festival held in Semamma, where I was able to get in touch with a powerful fraction of Berber musicality.
They expand the networks so I could develop some classes to share my knowledge in Capoeira Angola in the cultural place Cine MAD’Art. They also led me to a contract of employment at the National Theater of Tunisia in Tunis, where I had the opportunity to work with director Fadhel Jaibi in preparing the actors’ bodies for the show Le Martyr, and teach “body consciousness” to the other students of the actors’ training course. Benjamin Abras