Some artists don’t just create, they shatter norms, rebuild worlds, and redefine what is possible. Duda Teo is one of them. A transgender woman, a designer, an artist, and a thinker, she has turned her life into a bold artistic statement, one that challenges rigid structures and celebrates the beauty of transformation. From a small town in Santa Catarina to the forefront of Brazil’s artistic and intellectual scene, Duda’s journey is a testament to resilience, reinvention, and resistance.
Through art, she crafts her own existence, refusing to be boxed in by outdated notions of gender and identity. Her work isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s political, personal, and deeply connected to a long history of trans struggle. Whether illustrating, painting, or designing, Duda infuses her pieces with a radical sense of freedom. She is, in every way, an artist of defiance. In this conversation, we talk about her creative process, her influences, the price of authenticity, and, of course, the eternal quest for beauty.
Monika: Hello Duda!
Duda: Hello, Monika! Thank you so much for the invitation and for this sensitive and profound introduction. I want to start by emphasizing how crucial your work is in building new narratives about the trans population beyond violence and precariousness, in reshaping the collective imagination through empowerment.
Monika: Your name, Duda, meaning "doubt" in Spanish, seems to perfectly reflect your creative process. How has this sense of doubt influenced the way you approach your work, and do you think it’s essential to always be in a state of curiosity and exploration?
Duda: My name is a gift from my older sister, who couldn’t pronounce my dead name when I was born. I think she truly saw me and instinctively called me by what would later become my official name in the rectification process. One of the reasons I chose to make a nickname my official name was precisely the nature of doubt. I have never felt completely ready in any aspect, and that led me to deeper reflections about myself and the politics surrounding my existence in a transphobic world. Understanding myself as a political body and as a historical marker of a major dilemma of our time has shaped the way I think and create art.
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| "Dee Studio was a way for me to position myself through my gender transition." |
Today, my doubts revolve much more around my technical abilities, the aesthetics guiding my work, and how to build bridges for dialogue, rather than the message and reflection itself. The central point of my work is clear: to create substance against the historical erasure of the trans population, to affirm that we have always existed, rooted in documentary research tied to my works, and to bring to the surface deep reflections on the wounds that normativity inflicts on society as a whole. Violence is widespread. Liberation can be too.
Monika: You have your own design studio called Dee. Can you tell us what kind of services you offer and what sets your studio apart from others in the industry?
Duda: Since returning from Australia in 2019, I have worked independently, directly collaborating with clients who are free from animal exploitation and have no ties to politics or religion. Dee Studio was a way for me to position myself through my gender transition. I realized that I needed to transform my fears into narrative strengths and social value.
I went through a process of personal and professional repositioning, reformatting my work methodology, and undergoing a branding process, openly presenting myself as a trans designer with a background in social sciences, an activist artist, and someone who experiences the pressing social issues of our time.
Since 2015, I have worked with a design studio in Melbourne, and in recent years, I have collaborated with NGOs in Austin, Texas, focused on socio-environmental issues, as well as clients in Brazil in the fields of education, culture, alternative health (CBD market), design, and the third sector. My services revolve around branding and visual storytelling.
What sets my work apart is my unique methodology, which builds conceptual, narrative, and aesthetic foundations through a deep and socially valuable approach. I always prioritize an immersive experience that translates into aesthetic excellence and elevated discourse.
Monika: Your art is deeply rooted in political messages, cruelty-free practices, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility. You seek to collaborate with brands that are free of animal and human exploitation. Is this how you want your art to be perceived, as a tool for change and revolution in the world?
Duda: Without a doubt, this recognition is essential for building a reputation that gives me more tools to create positive impacts within my micro-world. The central point is to build bridges for dialogue, conversations about world models and about who will actually have access to the world we are imagining.
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| "Questioning cultural and moral inheritances has been a guiding principle in my development as an artist." |
Questioning cultural and moral inheritances has been a guiding principle in my development as an artist, and for that, it is necessary to live and study intensely. To live so that reality remains before our eyes and seeps into our skin, but also to study in order to understand how social ills are constructed over time and space.
But in the end, it’s all about language. There’s no point in understanding the structure of the world if I can’t share that knowledge. I like to think of my art as a vehicle to another place, a transition of consciousness.
Monika: Your childhood was marked by the confusion and pain of existing in a body that society refused to acknowledge as your own. As a child, you were addicted to drawing, did you find solace in creating parallel worlds, using art as an escape from the relentless violence, punishment, and persecution you faced?
Duda: Art has always been my refuge. I used to draw the identities I wanted to live and the world I wanted to be a part of. I was a girl throughout my entire childhood. I drew compulsively for years, almost always women, feminine figures, androgynous, exuberant, and completely non-normative beings. Gender anarchy was present from my very first memory, from my earliest strokes.
Drawing accentuated my sense of difference. Hours of admiration, hours of rejection, hours of being paid to draw, hours of being attacked because of what I created. My drawings had become an expression of my existence.
Throughout most of elementary and high school, I spent my recesses in the library, drawing and reading books, because it was the only place where I could feel safe during breaks. In the process, refining both my intellect and my artistic skills became inevitable.
Monika: Your transition was not only a personal transformation but also an intellectual awakening. With the guidance of other trans individuals who nurtured your curiosity and critical thinking, you began a deeper exploration of trans history. What questions did you find yourself asking as you uncovered the stories of those who came before you and the struggles they endured to make your existence possible today?
Duda: I owe everything to those who came before me, because it was through the struggles of our trans ancestors that we can live in the light of day today. My trans godmother is a transgender woman: Ariel Lovegood. We met through Instagram when I was living in Australia, she in Belo Horizonte, and I in Melbourne.
At the time, I was at the peak of my non-binarity, experiencing fluid gender in a highly experimental way, completely at odds with cisnormativity and with little deep understanding of what I was going through. She helped me understand myself as a transgender woman, not just as an identity, but as a political stance and a point of tension within the binary gender structure.
This discovery merged with the beginning of my Social Sciences studies and opened a new dimension in my understanding of how the world is structured and where I fit within it. I started studying the history of trans people in Brazil, took specialized courses on gender and sexuality dissidences, and connected with researchers, artists, and gender theorists.
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| "Gender anarchy was present from my very first memory, from my earliest strokes." |
All these experiences began to intertwine, weaving a moral and reflective fabric within me, filling me with a sense of purpose and courage. I was consumed by questions that burned like flames inside me: What was life like for these people? What did they have to endure just to exist? What were their greatest dilemmas and barriers?
Imagining the immense resilience and strength that every trans person throughout history has had to embody fills me, and continues to fill me, with gratitude and power.
Monika: While preparing for this interview, I learned that you became deeply interested in promoting knowledge about Xica Manicongo, the first transgender woman targeted by the Inquisition in Brazil. As her story is not widely known in Europe and the USA, what drew you to her and why do you think it's important to share her history?
Duda: Xica Manicongo is an unparalleled icon for our struggle today. She embodies intersecting markers of oppression, gender, race, and class, issues that cut across major social dilemmas and reinforce an undeniable truth about transness: we have always existed.
Xica’s story is reflected in the profiles of the most persecuted, brutalized, and murdered transgender women in Brazil, a country that has led the world in trans murders for 16 consecutive years.
Another crucial aspect of my studies has been focusing on trans identities in Brazil specifically, turning our gaze inward to understand what defines Latin American transness. You may have European ancestry, but to European and American imperialists, we will always be Latin. So why not look to our own territory and history?
Moreover, an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist perspective is essential when we recognize that some of the darkest chapters in Brazilian trans history were influenced by the United States, such as the military dictatorship and Operation Tarantula, driven by the same war-driven, eugenicist principles.
Monika: We all know the journey to becoming our true selves often comes with a heavy price, losing friends, family, jobs, and so on. I can certainly relate to that. Did you experience a similar cost in your journey? What was the toughest part of your coming out?
Duda: I lost everything I was afraid of losing, my marriage, my family, my job, friends, money, and reputation. My transition was marked by intense violence, psychological, physical, sexual, and institutional. I faced issues with every structure I had once belonged to, including the state and public services.
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| "I lost everything I was afraid of losing." |
Rebuilding my physical, mental, and financial health was incredibly difficult. Finding new ways to connect with my family, gathering the courage to build new relationships, and overcoming the depression that followed me for years were all part of the journey.
Everything is a process, but the questions tend to find answers as you take action to change your own life and make yourself your greatest project.
Monika: Do you remember the first time you saw a trans woman on TV or met one in real life who made you think, "That’s me!"?
Duda: I’m a child of the 1980s, so I didn’t have many references growing up. In the media, there was Roberta Close, Rogéria, and a few transgender women who performed on Programa do Silvio Santos. The dominant narrative around transness was prostitution, the dangers of the streets, and the HIV epidemic. Being trans wasn’t even something I considered at the time.
I only came to recognize myself as a transgender woman when others started emerging, like Linn da Quebrada and Liniker, for example. While we’ve had important figures in Brazil’s trans rights movement, our greatest role models beyond precarity are being forged now, in the arts, in universities, in both public and private sectors, and in the job market. The internet has allowed us to tell our own stories, organize ourselves, and showcase our potential. There’s no turning back.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Duda Teo.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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