Rafaela Camilo, Naked and Otherwise
Brazil doesn’t come recommended by its reputation. The violence is real, the inequality is visible from the plane, and Rio has a specific charge that can tip toward danger depending entirely on which streets you wander and at what hour. None of that is reason enough to stay away. It’s reason to go in knowing what you’re looking for.
What you’re looking for, if you care about music and art: the rooms that don’t appear in any travel content. Rio has always had a creative underground that doesn’t need international validation to thrive—a circuit of DJs, visual artists, and makers operating mostly at night, mostly in neighborhoods the lifestyle press ignores. DJ Rafaela Camilo moves through that world.
Photographer Camila Cornelsen shot her stark naked for the Sticks & Stones "Glitter in My Pockets" series—which is the most immediately obvious thing about the photos and also sort of the least interesting once you’ve spent more than thirty seconds with them. Rafaela loves flowers, cats, and tattoos. She has a body that makes rational thought briefly difficult. She carries herself with the ease of someone who has genuinely never had to think about it, and the camera catches that completely.
The better argument for her is the music. Her SoundCloud has this propulsive, sun-drunk club energy—something that feels rooted in the city rather than imported from European trends. There’s a density to it, a sense that Rio itself is informing the tempo.
You could book a flight and hope to stumble into the right club on the right night. Or start with the SoundCloud and see where it leads. Either way, Rafaela Camilo is the kind of artist who makes the case that Rio’s most interesting output has always been the stuff the tourism industry can’t package. Find her at @hahafa.