Maria Cecilia Westphalen

Biography

Maria Cecilia Ditzel Westphalen is a Brazilian artist-researcher, costume designer, practitioner and performer based in the UK. Her PhD research at London College of Fashion, UAL, explores costume, participatory performance and decolonial thinking through the concept of making-with. Grounded in her experience as a costume practitioner and facilitator, including participatory work at Tate Britain, her research investigates how collaborative making, embodied practice and material experimentation can generate relational knowledge, redistribute authorship and challenge extractive forms of participation. Drawing on Brazilian traditions such as Antropofagia, ReAntropofagia, oficina practices and Afro-Indigenous relational thinking, she considers costume as a relational interface between bodies, materials, memory and community.