Cordiais is an online database that correlates historical paintings that depict Brazilian women with the results of a facial recognition algorithm that measures these characters’ happiness, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and fear. This quantitative data is transformed into rectangles whose areas represent the amount of each emotion relative to the size of the original work, leading to a form of color-blocks abstract paintings-data-visualization. This irreverent process responds to the desire of rendering the digital body and the underlying mechanisms of power and representation, inherent to late surveillance capitalism, in more tangible forms.

Interactive Website

This project won the 2021 Marcantonio Vilaça Award from the Brazilian National Foundation for the Arts. It was developed in partnership with Thiago Hersan.

Studies for happiness. Acrylic, latex and golden leaf.

Linda Divani’s joy. Acrylic paint, latex and mineral pigment.

Exhibition view: Museum Without Walls, Queens University, Kingston, Canada.

Exhibition view: Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.

Exhibition view: Niterói Contemporary Art Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo by Gabi Carrera.