Supervised by Prof Dr Annebella Pollen at Brighton and Prof Dr Lia Krucken in Brazil, Matheus’s thesis – with the working title ‘Highlights’ – utilises the highlighting gesture both as a metaphor and as a creative methodology to perceive the public space as a book; movements and walks as writing and reading procedures; and his body as a text highlighter pen. Matheus is interested in intersectional narratives, of how ‘dissidents’ such as the queer community or the BIPOC women are often put on the margins – in contrast to privileged and white cis European men.
His research journey on nudist culture began in 2015 in Brazil when he would visit nude beaches along the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, where he was raised. His master’s thesis, ‘Cartografias do jogo: entre corpos, afetos e poder’ (Cartographies of game and play: between bodies, affections and power, 2020), addresses some of the initial concerns he had, such as the relations and ethical entanglements regarding the use of cameras in public nudity spaces.
More recently, having taken one of his university professor’s classes on waterscapes at the Federal University of Bahia, in Salvador, he started looking for information about Shangrilá nudist beach, the beach of the Brazilian north-eastern capital that became famous during the 1970s and 1980s.
The name Shangrilá, of the famed beach, gained popularity after James Hilton’s 1933 novel ‘Lost Horizon’. It referred to a place in the book to which white people would flock in the colonial Himalayas and hunt down a specific place to live in harmony forever. Shangrilá thus became a metaphor in pop culture, used to refer to places that are ‘Paradise-like’ – sites of refuge. And so, a multitude of things can be called Shangrilá. But Matheus asks us with his research: paradise for whom?
Postes #1. Postes (Street light) series. Embroidery in cotton. 26×14,5 cm. 2022.
The idea of a text-highlighter body implies that it can be marked by the world (i.e. social markers such as gender, race, sexuality, place, etc.) but it can also mark back. It could also respond, and this dialogue is his main question of interest. In a textile series that explores embroidery as a medium, Matheus shares that when he would walk on the streets of Salvador, in Shangrilá beach’s wealthy surroundings, he would see light posts on the horizon along the sidewalks with posters advertising both spiritual and financial services (related to loans etc.). De Simone suggests that people in Brazil, and globally as well, are not only in a great financial crisis but also a social crisis. So, by expressing social demands, these posters would resonate with him, especially as a queer person from an underprivileged community. Then, he would capture photos of these posters, as if highlighting those torn texts that he could not quite understand at first glance. Most of these posters are torn with the text on them barely legible but are still decipherable if one is familiar with this form of visual culture.
By highlighting these texts, he says their strict meaning is no longer as important as the context in which they are settled. Even if one cannot read them fully, one can assume the posters are a marginalised practice by the way they are presented on the streets. They would be found in a rich neighbourhood but also show the economic contrasts between distinct groups of society.
For his period in Brighton, Matheus intends to keep working on textiles (‘textiles’, he notes, is also a name for those who are not nudists) but with a close interest in how Brighton Naturist Beach and other naturist places have been depicted by media throughout the last decades.
Scanning. Shangrilá series. Oil on canvas. 20 x 30 cm. 2023
In his work ‘Scanning’, De Simone reports that the journalist in the article uses the expression in quotation marks, ‘coisas’ (things or stuff in Brazilian Portuguese), to ambiguously refer to the sexual practice that would take place on the nudist beach in question. He then decides to underline this expression, transport it to the canvas and combine an image from his archive of other nudist beaches in Brazil, where he finds visual traces of these same practices. This and 23 other paintings were exhibited at the Gruta Gallery (São Paulo, Brazil), in his solo exhibition ‘Shangrilá’, curated by Luise Malmaceda in 2023.
Matheus is interested in studying how media influences nudist practices by following an intersectional approach, and Brighton as a place offers the right environment with democratic access to the nudist beach frequented by a diverse set of people. He is interested in looking at how different people have different experiences with respect to the social groups they belong to. The idea of the sight of a naked body, the depiction of nudity and colour all become points of interest. Even when one is naked, one still has social markers implied. For instance, for a black or a trans person, different scenarios in different places would result in different experiences of being naked.
He argues how nudism as a practice, which appears to be trending in present times, is still held by white people within the realms of traditional norms by relating it to a time and context when naturism had begun gaining popularity. This was the time when many countries around the world were being colonised. In Europe, it was considered quite avant-garde to be naked in public whilst in the colonies, indigenous people were looked down upon as primitive for being naked. Matheus is thus keen on exploring this strand of enquiry while in Brighton, conducting a comparative study between the naturist and nudist histories in the Global South vis a vis a case study in Shangrilá, in the 70s and 80s and the same in Brighton.
Praia de Barra Seca postcard. From “Praias Nuas” thirty-postcards book. To be launched in June by Seiva Services. 2024.
Matheus adopts a range of creative digital tools in his research. He will soon launch his book titled Praias Nuas (‘Naked Beaches’ in Brazilian Portuguese) which has 30 detachable postcards with screenshots from different nude beaches taken from Google Street View platform. Each image is inscribed with a digital blue marker pen that colours the entire environment of the bather’s body. In a way, he criticises these many colonial paradises as they are not a ‘paradise’ for everyone and could appear as violent to other social groups. The book can be pre-ordered by writing to Matheus at matheusdesimone@icloud.com.
Matheus’ Portfolio can be explored, here and his dissertation (in Portuguese) can be accessed online here. Matheus is also giving a talk titled “Praias nuas: a comparative study of the nudist experience between naturist beaches in Brazil and England in 1970-1980s” on the 16th of July at Universidade do Porto in Portugal. The event can be found here. He will also be speaking as part of the Centre of Arts and Wellbeing’s Creative Research Methods Symposium on the 23rd of July. The presentation will follow a performative and audio-visual format, exploring relationships between nudism and sound.
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