Out and About is an artistic research project that connected LGBTQIAPN+ people in Brazil
and Slovenia through the intimate practice of letter writing. Developed between Mogi das
Cruzes (São Paulo, Brazil) and Ljubljana (Slovenia), the project created a space for queer
individuals to share personal narratives, everyday experiences and vulnerabilities across
geographic, cultural, and linguistic borders.
The project brought together ten queer participants (five from Brazil and five from Slovenia)
who were paired and invited to exchange letters over four months. Rather than following a
rigid structure, the correspondence unfolded at each participant’s own rhythm, allowing time
and reflection to shape the exchange. Letters were written in Portuguese or English and
carefully mediated through translation when needed, with attention to preserving political,
emotional, and identity-related nuances.
Out and About was conceived and led by artist and researcher Bianca Rêgo, who was born
in Mogi das Cruzes and lived temporarily in Ljubljana while volunteering at Društvo DIH –
Equal Under the Rainbow, one of Slovenia’s central LGBTQIAPN+ organizations. This
positionality of moving between contexts while being deeply connected to both, informed the
project’s intercultural perspective and its commitment to ethical, situated knowledge
production.
Throughout the correspondence, participants addressed themes such as identity and
self-discovery, family and religion, mental health, race, disability, neurodivergence,
community-building, activism, and everyday queer life. While the letters revealed important
contextual differences between Brazil and Slovenia — including distinct legal frameworks,
political climates, and social risks — they also exposed strong emotional and experiential
parallels. Many participants recognized themselves in one another’s stories, and in some
cases, the exchange led to enduring friendships that extended beyond the project itself.
Just like the project itself expanded beyond the private sphere of correspondence and took
on a public, artistic dimension through an art exhibition at the Pinacoteca de Mogi das
Cruzes, presented as part of Mostra MIX Mogi. The exhibition featured anonymized portraits
of the participants and selected excerpts from the letters, alongside accessible video
readings. One of its most powerful elements was an interactive installation that invited
visitors to respond to the letters on display or write letters to their past selves.
The public’s response was overwhelming: nearly one hundred letters were written by visitors
of different ages, identities, and backgrounds — not only queer people, but also cisgender
and heterosexual allies. A particularly meaningful moment emerged when a letter that had
remained unanswered within the original exchange was opened to collective response,
transforming silence into shared care and dialogue. In this way, the project demonstrated
how epistolary practices can activate communities and generate unexpected forms of
collective solidarity.
Alongside the exhibition, the project resulted in a scholarly article that analyzes the
correspondence and its contexts through a qualitative, intercultural, and artistic lens. The
article positions letter writing as a relational technology capable of articulating intimate and
political dimensions of queer life, and reflects on how local experiences — from a Brazilian
interior city to a European capital — can enter into meaningful global dialogue without
erasing their specificities.
The full academic article is available at the link below:
https://www.academia.edu/145470217/_Out_and_About_Queer_Experiences_in_S%C3%A3
o_Paulo_Brazil_and_Ljubljana_Slovenia_WITHOUT_ANNEXES?source=swp_share
Following the project’s impact, Društvo DIH has expressed interest in continuing and
expanding Out and About in 2026, potentially involving queer participants from additional
countries and regions. As such, the project remains open-ended — not as a closed research
outcome, but as an ongoing invitation to write, listen, and connect.
At its core, Out and About affirms that letters still matter: they carry memory, create bonds,
and open spaces where queer lives can be narrated with dignity, complexity, and care, even,
and especially, across distance.