Danilo Nobrega (b. 1993) is a self-taught visual artist, an LGBT+ individual from Rio de Janeiro currently living in Maricá. He began working as a street vendor at age 14 and worked as a waiter from age 17 until 30, when he suffered a breakdown. Following this, he turned to art therapy in 2017. Raised within Umbanda and Candomblé terreiros (religious centers), he is interested in Afro-American cults, Satanism, ceremonial magic, comic religions, and contemporary magical currents. He practices a form of esotericism known as ZosKia Cultus.
His work centers on the theme of resentment, intersecting experiences of class, belief, and memory. He views life’s fatalism and rawness through a mystical lens and practice—not to escape reality, but to affirm it. Without denying the shadows, he seeks to transform resentment into a source of power through art. In doing so, he elevates his lived experience into a form of tragic social provocation and class guerrilla warfare. He views critique as a political-existential method for self-creation, choreographing the tensions and incongruities of Being. He characterizes his output as “crepuscular”—existing between nightfall and daybreak, or vice versa. It is a process of transition—from night to day, from the structuring force to the structured form, from shadow to light, from the self to the collective, from the contained to the beyond.
He works across canvas, objects, text, and performance. His lines of inquiry include absent fatherhood, familism, oblivion, sexuality, illness, and plagiarism, among others. He always operates with magical intent, creating “spell-works.” While contemporary discourse often labels this type of work “visionary art,” he calls it Sorcery. He is a member of the collective O Círculo (@ocirculo.arte), which researches and promotes the intersection of art and magic.
