Eliete Mejorado


Eliete Mejorado is a Brazilian performance artist, musician, filmmaker and video director, best known for her work as the vocalist and keyboard player of tropical punk duo Tetine which she formed with poet and musician Bruno Verner in São Paulo in 1995.

Early 1980s

started her career in the early 80’s as a performance artist, videomaker and actress in São Paulo working with Luis Otavio Burnier and late choreographer Johnatas Gama. In the 80's she produced a number of experimental video works and solo performances that often involved music, dance, screaming vocals, miming, moustaches, wigs, physical theatre and drag. Some of her early work was performed solo or in groups in venues such as Sesc Pompeia and at legendary São Paulo post punk underground club Madame Sata.
From 1988-1992 Eliete Mejorado also studied Performing Arts at UNICAMP.

1990–2000

In 1994 Eliete Mejorado was rehearsing for a performance at Teatro Oficina when she met Bruno Verner for the first time. Eliete and Bruno soon found themselves creating a radical blend of atonalism, industrial, punk and noise improvising with a drum machine, an old piano and altered voices. These interludes would often happen during Roberto Zucco's rehearsal breaks. Both artists approach to performance, sound, voice, text and physicality were similar, resulting in the creation of a one-off art project that they later would baptize as Tetine.
In 1995 Tetine was officially born with the debut piece Alexandre’s Grave - a multi-media performance for voice, piano, electronics and projections shown at an old 70-seat auditorium called Teatro HAU at Bexiga in São Paulo.
Alexandre’s Grave marked the first of a series of works Bruno Verner and Eliete Mejorado would perform or exhibit as Tetine.
In 1995 her first album with Tetine, Alexandre’s Grave was released on High School Records.
In 1997 Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner wrote the original soundtrack for the dance piece CREME by Adriana Banana, ex Cia de Dança Burra. On Creme, Eliete sings, play keyboards and produced a number of tracks for the score.
In 1997 Eliete Mejorado, Bruno Verner and Ricardo Muniz Fernandes create a project called BABEL - curating the entire programme of the now legendary performance festival that took place in an abandoned petrol station in the borough of Pinheiros in São Paulo owned by SESC.
BABEL brought to São Paulo a series of performances and art works by international and local artists such as Orlan, Karen Finley, Lindy Annis, Teatro Oficina, Tetine, Laura Di Vison, Kazuo Ohno, Gerald Thomas, Cabelo, PUS, Marta Neves, Fernando Cardoso, Carlinhos, Claudio Cretti, Adriana Galinare amongst others. During 15 days the festival occupied a deactivated petrol station in the borough of Pinheiros with unconventional exhibition spaces, an experimental theatre, a small cinema, a stage for bands and an open air catwalk for fashion shows. BABEL was for free and received an incredible amount of Brazilian media attention & public visitation during its two weeks of life.
In 1998 Eliete Mejorado is invited to curate the music segment of MUNDAO at SESC SANTO AMARO bringing for the first time to Brazil, Diamanda Galás, Marianne Faithfull and John Cale for special performances in São Paulo. Other artists include Cibo Matto and a number of local artists.

2000–2014

In January 2000, Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner become resident artist at Queen Mary University of London, establishing themselves in the UK. At Queen Mary, University of London, Eliete Mejorado gave workshops on performance, music & sound manipulation to students of the Drama & Performance department and later created "Living Room" - an autobiographical spoken word piece for electronics presented at the university’s Harold Pinter Theatre. "Living Room" also took part of East End Collaborations Platform - a collaboration between the Live Art Development Agency and Queen Mary University showing emerging artists working with Live Art.
In 2002 Eliete Mejorado was awarded the full scholarship Bolsa Virtuose from Brazilian government to complete a Masters in Performance at Brighton University, UK.
In 2002 she collaborates with French artist Sophie Calle recording, producing and performing in the acclaimed electronic music album Samba De Monalisa - Tetine Vs Sophie Calle. The record was part of the collection Meld - a series of audio works and collaborations between artists released on Robin Rimbauld ’s label Sulpher Records. Other titles from Meld include DJ Spook, Scanner, Stephen Vittielo. At the same year Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner co-curate a film programme, slide projection and performance night with Ian White at Whitechapel Gallery entitled The Politics of Self Indulgence including films by Taka Limura, Chicks on Speed, Tetine, Marina Abramović, Chilly Gonzales and debuting their Samba de Monalisa performance live at Whitechapel Gallery.
In 2002 Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner fell in love with a new scene of female MCs of funk carioca from Rio de Janeiro and began broadcasting a weekly radio show called Slum Dunk on Resonance FM, 104.4 entirely dedicated to the genre. That's the first time funk carioca is played in Europe. After hundreds of radio shows spanning different periods of the genre, including a series of live interviews with Djs, MCs and people involved in the scene, in 2004, Bruno Verner & Eliete Mejorado compiled the pioneering mixtape Slum Dunk Presents Funk Carioca mixed by Tetine, released on Mr Bongo Records. At the same year they released an original blend of queer funk carioca in an album entitled Bonde Do Tetao on Bizarre Records in São Paulo. Critically acclaimed in Europe and in the USA, Slum Dunk Presents Funk Carioca influenced an entire new generation of DJs and producers including M.I.A and Diplo - artists who were beginning to experiment with funk carioca at more or less the same time. Tetine's Slum Dunk radio show was responsible to bring Funk Carioca – the intense lo-down Miami-bass driven sound from Rio’s favela parties – within London’s cultural radar, giving exposure to a number of Baile Funk artists for the first time in Europe, introducing the British and Americans to a new genre, as well as playing Brazil’s most experimental segments of funk carioca culture including the proibidoes.
The Slum Dunk show also covered from obscure electronica to post punk, funk carioca to avant hip hop, experimental mpb to film music and beyond – through hundreds of thematic or free-form radio shows including live performances, interviews with MCs, producers, artists, curators, journalists, beat & party politics conversations, screenings and more. Eliete Mejorado was also responsible for the London premiere of I’m Ugly BuT Trendy - a film by Denise Garcia on the funk carioca scene, later also exhibited in Tetine’s show Tropical Punk at Whitechapel Gallery.
In 2006 Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner put out - a 12’ release on Soul Jazz Records and the EP L.I.C.K MY FAVELA on Berlin's label Kute Bash.
In 2007 Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner exhibit "Tropical Punk" - a Brazilian tropical intervention that took place at the Whitehapel Gallery with a programme of films, artist videos, fanzines, T. shirts and performances.
In 2008 Soul Jazz Records releases Tetine's I Go To The Doctor as 12-inch - a collaboration with MC Deise Tigrona following Tetine’s acclaimed full album '.
In an interview for Cameron Macdonald refers to Eliete with the following quote "vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Eliete Mejorado often takes the stage in the scant garb of a Carnaval dancer, and leads the audience through sexually charged, politically provocative songs like the Tone Loc-sampling hip-hop number “L.I.C.K. My Favela.” “It’s fun and political at the same time,” Mejorado says of the band's ethos. “The world is an ultra-technological place and super-sexualized, but people don’t really know what to do with their bodies.”
In 2009 Eliete Mehorado is back in São Paulo for a series of shows, talks, exhibitions and workshops on Tetine’s project Samba de Monalisa. Tetine are invited to perform "Samba de Monalisa" at Sophie Calle's exhibition Take Care of Yourself as part of Videobrasil. At the same year Samba de Monalisa is also presented at the Bourdeaux Bienalle in France.
In 2010 Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner release independently From A Forest Near You and the 12' EP Tropical Punk including Yr Daughter Lies, a collaboration with LA duo Howardamb.
In June 2011 Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner and Brazilian artist Jarbas Lopes are invited to perform a re-enactment of the piece DEE GRAÇA in Firenze at the exhibition Tudo É - curated by Andrea Lissoni & Alberto Salvadori. In the same year Tetine play Tropical Punk at the International Summer Festival in Hamburg, Germany and then leave for Brazil for a series of exhibitions and performances in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte including a second instalment of Tetine & Jarbas Lopes Cashboxx / Degraçaaa at the exhibit Caos & Efeito at Itau Cultural in São Paulo.
With Tetine, still in 2011, Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner are commissioned by Sesc Vila Mariana to compose a new soundtrack for Rogerio Sganzerla's cinema marginal classic O Bandido Da Luz Vermelha. The concert is presented at Cine Concerto, SESC Vila Mariana with special guest Helena Ignez on stage with Tetine.
In 2012 Tetine are invited to perform at the prestigious Trienalle Di Milano as part Open Arti in Milan - an unusual laboratory programme of music, art & debate curated by Andrea Lissoni and Simone Bertuzzi with artists such as Venus X, legendary Italo disco DJ Daniele Baldelli, Awesome Tapes From Africa, Chief Boima, Miltos Mannetas amongst others. Still in 2012, Tetine is commissioned to create a brand new score for Neville D'Almeida Brazilian new wave classic Rio Babilonia. Later in June the concert is presented at the theatre of Sesc Santo Amaro in São Paulo as part of a big retrospective of the works of Neville D'Almeida entitled Alem Cinema. In September 2012 Eliete Mejorado perform 3 different pieces in Norway - including a brand new work entitled I Hope You Enjoy Your Stay. All the performances happened in Oslo over a weekend respectively at The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Stenersen Museum & Jaeger club.
In 2013 Tetine releases In Loveland With You'' produced by Bruno Verner. The first two videos for Burning Land and Loveland are filmed in London and directed by Eliete Mejorado.
Later in the year Bruno Verner, Eliete Mejorado, poet Ricardo Domeneck and German singer-songwriter Cunt Cunt Chanel go on a mini tour in Belgium organised by Hugo Lorenzetti.
In 2014 Eliete Mejorado directs a new video piece entitled Shake.

Albums (with Tetine)