Biography 

Denise Ferreira da Silva (Brazil) 

Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva is a Brazilian visual artist, academic, and philosopher based in Vancouver. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), A Dívida Impagavel (Oficina da Imaginaçāo Política and Living Commons, 2019), and Unpayable Debt (Stenberg/MIT Press, forthcoming) and co-editor (with Paula Chakravartty) of Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Her articles have been published in leading interdisciplinary journals including Social Text, Theory, Culture and Society, Social Identities, PhiloSOPHIA, Griffith Law Review, Theory and Event, and The Black Scholar, among other publications. In addition to her published work, she is the director of the Social Justice Institute-The Institute for Gender, Race, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. In 2015 she began a residency relational art practice program titled Poetical Reading and Sensing Salon in collaboration with Valentina Desideri, the program has expanded to Vancouver, Hamburg, Lisbon, Paris, London, and Saint Erme. She has exhibited and lectured at major art venues including the Pompidou Center (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), MASP (Sāo Paulo), Guggenheim (New York), and MoMA (New York). She has also written for publications for major art events (Sao Paulo Biennale 2016, Liverpool Biennale 2017, Venice Biennale 2017, and Documenta 14) and published in art venues including Canadian Art, Texte Zur Kunst, and E-Flux. 

Denise Ferreira’s studio work is media-art based, and her role as a scholar, researcher, and filmmaker informs her practice about ethnic-political studies and their impact on the environment. Her artistic works include the films Serpent Rain (2016) and 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), in collaboration with Arjuna Neuman.