Role Play

She’s a curator, not just at work but in every aspect of her life. Her apartment has designer armchairs. Her wallet is Comme des Garçons. Everything is selected and arranged, even her friends, culled from Brazil’s richest families, who play the supporting cast in Vivian’s ongoing performance of self. In Vivian’s world, everything comes in excess, including her own caustic self-awareness. As she informs us, “I’m a misandrist and a misogynist,” but she is fond of gay men, “the one type of human you can get along with as equals.” The gravity of real life breaks through Vivian’s ongoing act when she's confronted with an unexpected and awful proximity to police violence. Can she pause long enough to recast herself in a new role, one that fits her highly staged world and can account for the random and unpredictable? Role Play examines the super-abundances of Brazilian elites, their art and ethics, and their monied ambivalence in