{"id":402342,"date":"2026-01-23T15:59:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=402342"},"modified":"2026-01-26T10:03:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T13:03:33","slug":"granddaughter-of-syrians-turns-memory-into-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/granddaughter-of-syrians-turns-memory-into-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Granddaughter of Syrians turns memory into art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 From an early age, 49-year-old Val\u00e9ria Arbex learned that the most important stories are not always found in books. A granddaughter of Syrians<\/strong> on her mother\u2019s side, the actress was born and raised in S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s south side, in a middle-class family, surrounded by memories passed down orally by the only grandmother she knew: Nadime, a Syrian woman who arrived in Brazil at the age of ten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was through her ancestor\u2014who spoke Arabic, cooked traditional recipes, and told stories of her homeland\u2014that Arbex had her first contact with a cultural heritage that would later become raw material for her theater company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My grandmother wore a headscarf and told stories of her childhood, from before she became an immigrant, while she cooked<\/p>Val\u00e9ria Arbex<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy grandmother wore a headscarf and told stories of her childhood, from before she became an immigrant, while she cooked. Everything I learned about Arab culture when I was young came from her,\u201d says Arbex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in a typical 1980s childhood, filled with street games, and with a shy personality, the S\u00e3o Paulo native didn\u2019t seem destined for the stage. But the soap opera lover saw her life change in her teens, in the early 1990s, when her parents were able to pay for a theater course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 15, Arbex began classes at a conservatory in the Brooklin neighborhood, in the city\u2019s south side. From the very start, theater stopped being a curiosity and became her profession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After attending schools like the Pirandello Acting Course and Indac, Val\u00e9ria joined professional theater companies and productions, performing works by Nelson Rodrigues and Pl\u00ednio Marcos, before moving to Rio de Janeiro, where she stayed for seven years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2009, she returned to S\u00e3o Paulo and founded her own group: the Damasco Theater Company<\/a>\u2014named after the capital of her maternal grandparents\u2019 homeland.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Arbex
Arbex on stage in Salamaleque: Play inspired by her Syrian grandmother<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The idea for the play came after Arbex discovered a family treasure: 68 love letters exchanged between her maternal grandparents during their engagement, which took place between 1937 and 1939.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written while each lived in different towns in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, the letters had been left as an inheritance by Nadime but remained forgotten for years. Delving into the correspondence sparked research that went beyond the family sphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This led to academic studies on Arab immigration<\/strong>, interviews with merchants, researchers, and descendants, as well as visits to cities connected to the family\u2019s history. From this process emerged \u201cSalamaleque,\u201d a play that premiered in 2013 and was directly inspired by her Syrian grandmother\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Set in a kitchen, the play wove together memories, family stories, cuisine, and fiction, as the character revisited the experiences of different generations of Arab women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running until 2016, the play had seasons in S\u00e3o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and also toured festivals. From it, Arbex developed workshops on cuisine and emotional memory, as well as projects for children, always aiming to bring audiences closer to Arab culture beyond stereotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you tell a story about how things are, you\u2019re already demystifying it,\u201d says the S\u00e3o Paulo native.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written, visual, and female<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

During the pandemic, isolated at home, Arbex found a new creative path. She began producing photographic self-portraits in which she embodied different female characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each image was accompanied by a name and a brief caption. The project grew and years later gave rise to the book Majestosa<\/em>, published in April 2025 by \u00d3pera Editorial. The work consists of letters written by women who, over the course of a century, lived at the same address.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Ador\u00e1veis
Ador\u00e1veis Personagens is the name of Val\u00e9ria Arbex\u2019s podcast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

One of them is Ant\u00f4nia, a character of Arab origin. \u201cIt\u2019s nearly impossible for me to create anything without including an Arab woman. And whenever I write about an Arab character, I use my grandmother as inspiration,\u201d explains the writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cuisine, customs, and female memory of her ancestor run through the narrative, even when the theme isn\u2019t explicitly about immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same family universe expanded into her podcast, available on Spotify<\/a>, called \u201cAdor\u00e1veis Personagens,\u201d recently created. In weekly episodes, Arbex writes and performs stories of women, always told from the perspective of another woman\u2014a friend, a daughter, a student, or a neighbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among them are Arab characters, like Jamile, a university professor who wears a hijab, presented from an intimate, everyday perspective. Crafted in an artisanal way, the podcast combines writing, performance, and memory, reinforcing a constant feature of her work: giving voice to women whose stories rarely take center stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more<\/em>:
Vargens and his half century of Arabic teaching<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Report by Rebecca Vettore, in collaboration with ANBA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Guilherme Miranda<\/strong><\/p>\n

Supplied<\/div>
Supplied<\/div>
Supplied<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discover the journey of Brazilian Val\u00e9ria Arbex, who transformed the stories passed down by her immigrant grandmother into material for her artistic work. Her Arab heritage permeates both her theater play and her book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2342,"featured_media":401833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[55680,3299,30663,2093,55681,10648,17557,17524,14869,9611,3656,42193,4119],"class_list":{"0":"post-402342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-arab-art-2","9":"tag-arab-culture","10":"tag-arte-en","11":"tag-book","12":"tag-granddaughter-of-arabs-2","13":"tag-livro-ar","14":"tag-podcast-en-2","15":"tag-podcast-en","16":"tag-siria-en-2","17":"tag-syria-en","18":"tag-syrians","19":"tag-teatro-en","20":"tag-theater"},"wps_subtitle":"Discover the journey of Brazilian Val\u00e9ria Arbex, who transformed the stories passed down by her immigrant grandmother into material for her artistic work. Her Arab heritage permeates both her theater play and her book.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2342"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}