Sanni Est - Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer. Photography: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly

Sanni Est

Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer

Sanni Est (@sanniest) is a singer, performer, and transmedia artist based in Berlin who challenges notions of knowledge, reason, and normativity with her voice and projects. She will perform her latest audiovisual work Photophobia in the form of a live concert on the 26th of August at Pop-Kultur, Berlin. YEOJA Mag sat down with Est to talk about her recent projects and future visions in the shadows of the apocalypse.

Sanni Est! Pleasure to make your acquaintance in the magical realm of the digital. In your latest audiovisual work, Photophobia, you conjure up a digital and sonic multiverse as you imagine a world after the decline of a capitalist, cis-normative supremacist system. Could you tell us a bit more about this virtual post-human world, the characters that roam its realms, and the tales they tell?
The world of Photophobia is rooted in the neo-genesis of a mangrove. The mangrove is the native landscape of the coast of Pernambuco, Brazil, where I am from. The roots of the mangrove trees are equally subaquatic and land, depending on the tide. It is also the home of crabs. One of the reasons why the crabs choose the mangrove to live in, is because they can survive both above and underwater. They appear when the tide is high, and disappear when the tide is low. In the urbanisation of my hometown Recife, mangroves were killed to construct buildings. As a result of gentrification, poor, marginalised, and Black people were then sent to the borders of the city, which were typically covered by mangrove. 

In the 1970s in Brazil, a sociologist called Josué de Castro studied the socio-political dynamics of the mangroves and the people who inhabited this area, communities who he compared to crabs. In the 1990s, Chico Science also paid homage to the mangrove men in the form of political music with the Mangue Beat movement. I was inspired by Mangue Beat due to its combination of electronic instruments like guitar and hip hop samples with very typical North-Eastern Brazilian rhythms like maracatu, frevo, ciranda, and afoxé. Building on these ideas, together with the artist Camila Roriz and Gabriel Massan, we drafted a plot of the nine chapters of Photophobia where both digital and organic creatures like me and other singers of the album exist in many different versions as an illusion [sic] to our resilience and transformational powers to navigate this world we still live in. We interact peacefully and travel and transform around a multitude of dimensions, seeking depth and truth.

Sanni Est - Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer. Photography: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer Assistant: Sarah Tasha
Production: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly, Sanni Est, Sara Grotsch, Annie Kim
Creative Directors: Sanni Est, Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Styling: Gadutra
Muah: Olivia Nwachukwu
Nail technician: Medusa Berlin
Set Design: Sara Grotsch, Anna Klaine
Sanni Est wears:
Top: Gown by Mariana Novais, Necklace: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador

Photophobia paints a post-apocalyptic world. Do you find the depth and truth you seek in the apocalypse?
I see the apocalypse as a new beginning. Many people with intersectional marginalised identities, like myself, have had to navigate the world in a state of emergency from day one, so the idea of the apocalypse is not new to us. But when the apocalypse is happening globally it opens up chances to deeply rethink our societal models because there is no way forward anymore. I think this is what Photophobia is about: facing the darkness, recognising your blind spots, and most importantly, closing your eyes and getting used to the underlit and not only what is flashy and in your face. This applies to notions of knowledge and education too. Since the enlightenment, academic knowledge has been perceived as the only real type of knowledge. Yet its knowledge often stems from ideas that are Eurocentric, capitalist, racist, anti-Black, misogynistic, transphobic, and perpetuates these ideas.

Sanni Est - Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer. Photography: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer Assistant: Sarah Tasha
Graphic Artist: Gadutra
Production: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly, Sanni Est, Sara Grotsch, Annie Kim
Creative Directors: Sanni Est, Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Styling: Gadutra
Muah: Olivia Nwachukwu
Nail technician: Medusa Berlin
Set Design: Sara Grotsch, Anna Klaine
Sanni Est wears:
Top: Gown by Mariana Novais, Necklace: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador

Photophobia is a multi-layered and complex audio-visual work following your second studio album. Some recurring themes are those of darkness and transformation. How have you translated the experiences of lightness and darkness into the sonic aspects of the work?

Prior to recording the album I did research around meanings of dark and black in European languages. The words that came up were such as “miserable,” “depressed,” “gloomy,” “cheerless,” “illegal,” “violent,” “undesired,” and “impure.” I was very naturally drawn to even these problematic connotations of dark and black and tried to connect them with my own experiences. I wanted to show that I can indulge in this negativity and still make something beautiful. And so, I reached the point where I was exploring my own “darkness,” until I found comfort in it and could understand the purpose of being confronted with your own sadness, your own dark side, in order to be able to flourish.

You cannot only pursue “lightness,” because this is a recipe for disaster. This is what whiteness preaches: you always have to be “white,” “clean,” “fresh,” “clear,” have a “light” energy and be happy all the time. Go on vacation, do your job, build a family, buy a house, go to church, go to college. They make a script for everybody to follow and if you do not perform whiteness, then you are doomed to be miserable – an outcast. This creates a very exclusionary and oppressive society. With Photophobia, I am hoping to connect people with their deeper, “darker,” sides so that maybe this can also unfold in them, exercising more self-knowledge to ultimately being better people in society.

Sanni Est - Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer. Photography: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer Assistant: Sarah Tasha
Production: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly, Sanni Est, Sara Grotsch, Annie Kim
Creative Directors: Sanni Est, Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Styling: Gadutra
Muah: Olivia Nwachukwu
Nail technician: Medusa Berlin
Set Design: Sara Grotsch, Anna Klaine
Sanni Est wears:
Top: Gown by Mariana Novais, Necklace: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador

Photophobia is the story of a comeback; a new beginning. But it is preluded by the story of exhaustion and retreat from a dystopian reality rooted in the white patriarchal system. How has your experience as a trans Afrolatina living in Germany shaped the conception and production of Photophobia

When I first moved to Germany, I was not aware of the discrimination, oppression, and systemic rejection that I was about to experience. Especially when I started producing art and events, it became clear that I was not welcome, that I was not a priority, and that whatever I do as an artist, is going to have only a small fraction of recognition and remuneration as my white peers get. This is still the case. It is very clear that we do not get the same attention, we do not get the same engagement, we do not get the same numbers – not even by comparison. This imbalance is not at all based on the respective quality of what we do. I learned very early that I have to work ten times as much if I want to be able to put out meaningful work, especially when the production requires a bigger team and more equipment, which is what I am drawn to. It is not by accident that Photophobia is such a futuristic project. I have always been obsessed with the future, and it is one of the reasons why I migrated to Europe because, unfortunately, they rob the world of resources and gather them here.

Sanni Est - Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer. Photography: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer Assistant: Sarah Tasha
Graphic Artist: Anna Klaine
Production: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly, Sanni Est, Sara Grotsch, Annie Kim
Creative Directors: Sanni Est, Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Styling: Gadutra
Muah: Olivia Nwachukwu
Nail technician: Medusa Berlin
Set Design: Sara Grotsch, Anna Klaine
Sanni Est wears:
Top: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador, Bottom and accessories: Mariana Novais

You have produced and performed this and many other impressive works without the help of a label, agency, or booker. Could you tell us a bit more about how you work, specifically how you brought Photophobia into being?
I have worked with a label in Berlin in the past. On the first tour that I did with them, I was physically harassed by the booker. As the label did not kick him out, I peacefully left the room. But they were not serious about me or my career in general. As a Latina, as a trans artist, as a Brazilian, as an immigrant, what I do is not so easily put in one box. I dare to do something that is multi genre and that is complex, yet the Eurocentric market does not expect complexity from someone like me. They want to put me in a box where they can either feel pity or where they can “empower” me by over-sexualising me. I think these are the only possibilities for trans Latinas at the moment. There remains a big lack of knowledge around the hyper-sexualisation of Latinas in Europe and what this means for our professional and love lives. It is an extremely hostile environment in which we face sexual violence and underestimation. This definitely gave me the frustration and anger to dedicate myself to writing and singing the songs of Photophobia.

Sanni Est - Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer. Photography: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer Assistant: Sarah Tasha
Graphic Artist: Anna Klaine
Production: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly, Sanni Est, Sara Grotsch, Annie Kim
Creative Directors: Sanni Est, Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Styling: Gadutra
Muah: Olivia Nwachukwu
Nail technician: Medusa Berlin
Set Design: Sara Grotsch, Anna Klaine
Sanni Est wears:
Top: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador, Bottom and accessories: Mariana Novais

You recently curated the ENCANTADAS exhibition together with A TRANSÄLIEN and Ué Prazeres for the Schwules Museum Berlin (SMU). The exhibition presents seven artists from the north and northeast of Brazil whose works and life narratives revolve around mystical cosmovisions, not much unlike your own work. Do you see any crossovers between your curatorial and artistic projects?
Yes, by all means! ENCANTADAS has been a huge milestone in my curatorial career and parallel to that, the Photophobia immersion preview was also a great milestone in my career with the audiovisual immersive exhibition at Kampnagel in Hamburg. Both exhibitions opened within six days of one another, so after opening ENCANTADAS in Berlin I took a bus to Hamburg and started building up the Photophobia immersion. 

To come back to the question, I think any artistic creation is related to some sort of curation; you curate your references, you curate your ideas, you curate the collaborators you want to work with. I take this curation process very seriously. I do deep research. And I only collaborate with people that share some parallels in their own experience, meaning people who are themselves also immigrants, people of colour, queer, and especially trans people and femmes. This is not my main curatorial point, rather a condition. I am also extremely interested in artists who use their own life experience to create something beyond the journalistic trauma porn that social media is so addicted to and pushes us towards doing.

Sanni Est - Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer. Photography: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer Assistant: Sarah Tasha
Production: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly, Sanni Est, Sara Grotsch, Annie Kim
Creative Directors: Sanni Est, Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Styling: Gadutra
Muah: Olivia Nwachukwu
Nail technician: Medusa Berlin
Set Design: Sara Grotsch, Anna Klaine
Sanni Est wears:
Top: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador, Bottom and accessories: Mariana Novais

Circling back to darkness and transformation, do you feel living in Berlin – I would say a more grim place in terms of the amount of sun and daylight than Brazil – has transformed you and your practice? 
To begin with, I would not say that Berlin is by definition a more grim place than Brazil. We have been under a right-wing government since 2015, when Dilma was impeached, and the situation has engraved significantly after Bolsonaro in 2019. Brazil is a place where more people are killed than anywhere world-wide at the moment. Brazil is also the country that kills trans women and transvestites the most in the whole world. It kills trans women and transvestites twice as much as Mexico, which came in second place a few years ago. Brazil is an extremely violent and hopeless place to live, where one quarter of people do not have food security, and where anxiety and depression are skyrocketing. It is extremely heartbreaking to live in Brazil at the moment, especially as a queer person of colour and especially as an artist. 

That being said, living in Berlin has served my introspection. The long and dark winters definitely play a toll on your mental health, which puts you in a much longer state of inertia and depression, if you already lean towards that. Also, the parties – the endless parties in bunkers and basements, the dark rooms – the drug-users in the U-bahn, the constant confrontation with human failure as a society and as a culture… It portrays that robbing and accumulating so many resources from all over the world, but not exercising any self-knowledge as a society, just, really, puts everybody in shit. Germany is a place of melancholia. There is a high number of extremely unhappy, jealous, insecure, and deeply ashamed people who in turn make the lives of whole classes of underprivileged communities extremely hard. As soon as I can, I will definitely spend much less time here than I do at the moment.

Sanni Est - Interview with the Brazilian transmedia artist, singer, and performer. Photography: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Photographer Assistant: Sarah Tasha
Graphic Artist: Anna Klaine
Production: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly, Sanni Est, Sara Grotsch, Annie Kim
Creative Directors: Sanni Est, Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Styling: Gadutra
Muah: Olivia Nwachukwu
Nail technician: Medusa Berlin
Set Design: Sara Grotsch, Anna Klaine
Sanni Est wears:
Top: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador, Bottom and accessories: Mariana Novais

Another recurring theme within your artistic and curatorial projects is that of mysticism. Has this always been a guiding force throughout your life, or is this something you have found yourself gravitating towards later on in your journey?
This is a really funny question because I never consciously perceived that about my work up until recently. Even after premiering Photophobia, I wasn’t aware of how spiritual my entire practice is. I think in practice, this has always been a part of my creative process, which is entirely out of my control. I cannot force it, I cannot determine when I am going to create something, I cannot limit it, and I genuinely consider myself a passive factor. I usually tell people that my songs come to me, that they are served, handed over to me, which I am very grateful for. And I think it naturally transmits in my performance, in my presence, and in my storytellings.

Lastly, what do you envision the future holds?
This is a very tough question to ask in 2022. I don’t hold a miraculously hopeful vision for the future. I think the apocalypse is just beginning. I think that humanity will continue to experience mass extinctions. I think of climate refugees, pandemics, wars, famines, and colonialism. We live in constant human extinction. Maybe the global north doesn’t feel as such now because they are the ones profiting from this mass extinction, but I do believe that mass extinction will spread. I think there is no other way for us to keep living in society than getting in touch with our own shortcomings. We need to kill our ego, we need to deconstruct categories of the human experience, we need to finally understand and put in practice that capitalism is not the way to go. I believe in public sanctions. I believe in limiting plane travel, fashion production, and meat consumption. I believe in environmentalists and in indigenous people taking over leadership. These are the visions I invest my entire energy in manifesting for the future.
_

Photographer: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly

Photographer Assistant: Sarah Tasha
Graphic Artists: Anna Klaine, Gadutra
Production: Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly, Sanni Est, Sara Grotsch, Annie Kim
Creative Directors: Sanni Est, Rae (Mee-Jin) Tilly
Styling: Gadutra
Muah: Olivia Nwachukwu
Nail technician: Medusa Berlin
Set Design: Sara Grotsch, Anna Klaine

Sanni Est wears:
Red look: Gown by Mariana Novais, Necklace: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador
Blue look: Top: Sopa de Gato/Alba Gador, Bottom and accessories: Mariana Novais

To keep up with Sanni Est on Instagram, click here. To read more interviews with Berlin-based artists, click here.