Sometimes the most beautiful projects don’t come from a finished plan, but from a question.

What is identity?

This question stayed with Rénner from Nandart and me for weeks. We weren’t looking for a definition. Rather, we wanted to create a space where people could find their own answer.

That’s how Identity under Construction came to be – an interactive art project we brought to life at Caldas Late Night.

Over three afternoons and evenings, Rénner’s small apartment turned into a place full of encounters. People came in, paused, watched, started talking, or picked up a brush themselves.

Each visitor received a small piece of fabric with the same question:

“What is your definition of identity?”

What happened next surprised us.

Some wrote texts. Others drew symbols or painted intuitively. Some took their time, discussing identity with strangers and what shapes them as people. Others simply got lost in the creative process – without words.

And that was exactly where the beauty of the project lay.

There was no right answer.
No more beautiful drawing.
No better thought.
Just honest moments.

Later, all these small pieces of fabric became a scarf. A textile mosaic of thoughts, colors, and personalities. Each individual contribution tells its own story – and yet only together do they form the bigger picture.

In parallel, Rénner painted while I sewed live. The painted pattern pieces later became a shirt and a pair of pants. The art moved from canvas to fabric – and finally onto the body. The longer we worked on this project, the clearer it became to us that this is where the real message lies.

Our identity is formed in a similar way.
We meet people.
We collect memories.

We adopt some thoughts, discard others, change our view of the world, and carry traces of all these encounters with us.

None of it happens all at once. Identity isn’t a finished state, but a process.

Maybe that’s why it’s never perfect. Maybe it doesn’t have to be.

To everyone who picked up a brush during Caldas Late Night, shared a thought, or simply spent a moment with us:

Thank you.

You didn’t just visit this project—you helped create it.