Renan Carvalho/ HAUSVRAU

Biography

Renan Carvalho, aka HAUSVRAU, (she/they, * 1995, Jundiaí-SP, Brasil) is based in Bern, Switzerland. 

HAUSVRAU produces from a place of emotion, always using varied and combined art forms. With a dance and painting background, she brings out her persona through fashion and music, having herself as a canvas and melting pot of influences. Playing with the idea of malleability and construction, she discusses patchworks, transness, love, migration, the body and the self as an emerging starlet, a theater diva. 

2019-2021: Bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Dance at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

Carvalho worked as a curator for CRIA Festival (CH), Palais Mascotte (Zurich, CH), Verein Am Bollwerk (Bern, CH) and FAGDOM (Zurich, CH). 

Amongst other places, her work has been presented at: Rote Fabrik (CH); Coin Coin Offspace (CH); In Transformation & sosospace (CH); cuadro22 (CH); Prozess Bar & Kultur (CH); Dampfzentrale (CH); Brasilea (CH); ArtSpace Bremerhaven (DE) and Transtronica Festival, Kampnagel (DE). 

Artist Statement

I’m a heated and sensitive person who creates. Whether it may be dance, music, text, performance, drag or a combination of all of those, my work is guided by the idea of collecting, compiling and patchworking references.

This patchworking starts with my name that came from a play on words between hausfrau (housewife in German) and vrau (a Brazilian expression used in moments of joyful surprise and celebration, which can also implicate a sexual act). HAUSVRAU is how I explore and express my latinidade, femininity and cosmopolitanism.

Those explorations and expressions tend to be about personal questions of identity, biographical experiences or attempts at designing a new and utopian self. They can also be about love and care, about belonging and creating spaces for marginalized communities. HAUSVRAU is the hostess of ephemeral spaces of exchange between bodies, on the dancefloor or in the artist public relationship.

My work is a love letter to the matriarchal lineage of my bloodline, to my queer ancestry, to my queer peers and to my young self. My art is the product of my being.