Tropical Trauma Misery Tour
Brazil / Italy
2026
Tropical Trauma Misery Tour is a speculative documentary project that unpacks the farcical spectacle and digital chaos surrounding Brazil’s far-right rise, while exposing global strategies of misinformation, and manipulation that define politics today. Taking the 2018 stabbing of Jair Bolsonaro as a catalyst, the work traces how a single event became a foundational myth—amplified by memes, and doctored images into a machinery of digital belief.
Through staged imagery, archival fragments, and meta-fictional strategies, the artist builds a theatre of political farce, revealing how populism blurs fact and fiction. Though rooted in Brazil, the project mirrors a global condition and invites viewers to question how to keep our eyes open when truth is constantly rewritten.
With the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Portfolio
About the artist
Born in 1989, in Brazil, Rafael Roncato is a visual artist, editor, and researcher living between Brazil and the Netherlands. With a background in photography, visual arts, and journalism, his work explores how images shape power, belief systems, and collective memory through semi-fictional narratives.