Artist in Residence, Stockholm, 4 November 2024–25 April 2025

Michelle Jean de Castro is an architect based between São Paulo and Stockholm, who uses architecture to interrogate the world around us and to explore spaces of violence, particularly systems of power and oppression.

Michelle Jean de Castro

She is currently developing an ongoing art and research project centered on the concept of haunting—when something previously hidden or overlooked comes into view. This includes projects such as Sacred Groves & Secret Parks: Orisha Landscapes in Brazil and West Africa, conducted under the guidance of the Hutchins Center. This project offers insights into the materiality and spatiality of Afro-religious diasporic practices. Another project, What is Not Forest is Ruination, developed within the Lina Community during the pandemic, maps the discovery of mass graves in São Paulo’s cemeteries and ignites a conversation about the architecture of death as a tool of colonial control. Castro is also working on a project entitled Ghostly Matters.

Ghostly Matters, named after Avery Gordon’s book, seeks to understand how certain forms of dispossession, exploitation, and repression tangibly shape the lives of those most affected, influencing our shared living conditions. For Gordon, haunting is distinct in that it represents an active state where repressed or unresolved social violence reveals itself, sometimes directly, and at other times more subtly.

During her residency, Castro will continue to work on Ghostly Matters, exploring questions such as: How do we engage with open secrets? How do we take responsibility for what is hidden? How do we address spaces that are already ruins at the time of their creation?