Pseudosphynx is the scientific name of the fire-caterpillars soon to become butterflies, or as they are commonly (and auspiciously) called: witches. These butterfly-witches are associated with several myths, one of which narrates that, during the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, it was believed that ‘witches turned into butterflies, a sort of transformism of living beings—real or imagined.’ Pseudosphynx, thus, is simultaneously sphinx, meaning inhuman chthonic monstrosity that spells charades; and pseudo, as in artificial, insincere, deceptive, unreal, illusive, mimetic. Pseudosphynx keeps its meaning veiled, like a secret kept by those who save in their retinas the haptic impression of their fight.

Ana Vaz is an artist and filmmaker born in the Brazilian Midwest inhabited by the ghosts buried by its modernist capital: Brasília. Her filmography activates and questions cinema as an art of the (in)visible and an instrument capable of dehumanizing the human, expanding its connections with life forms—other than human or spectral. Consequences or expansion of her cinematography, her activities are also embodied in writing, critical pedagogy, installations or collective walks.