Xana Novais

Como matar mulheres nuas [How to Kill Naked Women] questions the work of Sade from the most uncommon perspective regarding the stage, reality and immortality. We thus open a space to give voice to the women who narrate the most absurd pleasures of debauchery and are almost never highlighted when discussing this work (The 120 Days of Sodom). What is vital here are the actions suggested by these women, the libertine and feminist beauty, the risk of understanding that the fate of disgust is countered with beauty, charm and pleasure. In Como matar mulheres nuas, we put the pain and the limits to the test. The pain was also the object of study in the work of Sade as being apathetic in his characters: “pain is itself the greater purpose for a libertine, elevation itself, the very apex that we must apathetically try to reach”. — Xana Novais


Xana Novais has been developing her works through a series of mental and physical tests she sets out for herself in a constant limbo between fiction and reality with extremely autobiographical details. In this research, she seeks to understand how she can manage to prevent her work from dying, creating a peculiar safe space for herself, a performance that leads one to reflect upon the possibility of truly marking oneself with an artistic practice, this time around not only in her body, but also in the body of her performers.  

Xana Novais was born in Porto in 1995 and is an actress, dancer and performer. She graduated in 2013 in Theater at Balleteatro and later took the FAICC - Formação Avançada em Interpretação e Criação Coreográfica, at Instável - Centro Coreográfico. As a creator, she created #NAZIPARTY, (VS) POPCORN, Un Teknè, (G) Dysphoria APP and co-created with photographer Diogo Bessa One Way To Pandora. In her creative, research and performance work she uses her own body to explore and question the limits of the artwork, and the boundaries between fiction and reality.