Erika Schwarz

Erika Schwarz is a Brazilian scenographer, costume designer, and professor. Her professional work over the past 15 years encompasses a wide range of projects in theater, dance, visual arts, cinema, concerts, and exhibitions. She researches the practice and teaching of contemporary performance design, with a focus on ecological, collective, and transdisciplinary pedagogies.

She holds a Master’s degree in Performing Arts from Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) and a PhD in Visual Arts from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Currently, is a Professor of Scenography and Costume Design at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo, Brazil, where she developed the methodology figurino em roda [costume in circle].

In the second semester of 2024, she carried out the postdoctoral research Costume in Circle, among other inSURgent pedagogies at Aalto University, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Sofia Pantouvaki. The research examined practical and pedagogical aspects of the methodology in focus, especially the co-creation of costumes interconnected with the activation of temporary creative communities, using various procedures, such as the reuse of pieces from the costume wardrobe, body relaxation, self-massage and imagetic mapping exercises through writing, which outlined what has since been investigated as acts of costume.