PERFORMANCE artist Nando Messias moved away from his native Brazil and the homophobic abuse he would suffer on a daily basis.

“Every single day, the moment I stepped out of my front door I knew I had to expect it,” he says.

“It was such a miserable life.”

When the artist and academic moved to the UK he recalls a weight being lifted as the insults disappeared as people embraced him, with “no one looking twice”.

“It is a place where people embrace eccentricity and embrace difference,” he says. 

But this newly-found peace was shattered when one evening while he was coming home from the theatre.

He took a taxi before deciding to walk the rest of the way, he was then subject to a vicious homophobic attack.

In the streets near Toynbee Studios he was accosted by a gang of eight men, before being beaten, left bruised and broken, just a stone’s throw from his flat.

It was an event which shook him to his very core and left him too scared to leave his home.

But now more than ten years later, after rebuilding his confidence and trying to work out how best to respond, he devised a performance art piece, which is part dance, part theatre, part walking performance, The Sissy’s Progress. 

“It took me three weeks to be able to go outside my flat,” he says. 

“I was fearful. I called had called the police and I thought they were going to retaliate.

“First of it was just getting over that and then it was about working on myself, my fears and my reservations.

“Then came to the creative process of how you can use this is very delicate, finding a balance where something is a piece of art, performance and therapy, while also not exploiting the experience but using it. There is a fine line between those two things.”

Part of the Brighton Fringe’s Window programme, The Sissy’s Progress will see Messias take to the streets of Brighton and Hove wearing a red dress and accompanied by a marching band.

“The performance has this mechanism of hypervisibility,” he says.

“What I realised as a genderqueer person is I had no way of hiding my queerness when in public.

“I also realised I had no desire to that, I was not willing to do it, because that would be act of self-imposed violence – to do so I would have been acting like they, trying to stop myself from being who I am.

“So rather than try to arrange those characteristics it is doing the opposite of that, turning the volume up in a very literal way with the marching band with me.

“Even if you do not see me walking past you willere hear me and your gaze will be drawn.”

Messias has now performed the piece in a number of locations, including along the very street which he was attacked on.

But while he says the vast majority of the response has been “overwhelming” he has still heard some passers-by making homophobic comments towards him as carries out the performance.

“The audience can witness right there and then on the streets that happening,” he says. 

“One of the considerations I had was 'do I really I need to do this performance?' Hasn’t the battle been won?

“But then suddenly a comment would be thrown at me and I would realise ‘no’, there is still room for this, people still need to do this work and much more.”

While he says people are “very lucky” living the UK, saying the country is on the forefront the equality movement, Messias adds there is “a lot of work to do”.

“I would really love to take this performance to places like Russia, Uganda, Brazil,” he says. 

“But I also have to factor in my own safety and musicians safety.

“In those places the conditions are not right yet for a performance like this to happen in public, but they are the places which need this kind of thing.” 

When asked how long it took him to comes to terms with what happened to him on the streets of London ten years ago, he says “I do not think anyone recovers fromor that ever.”

He goes on; “It is always going to be with me. It is in body, it has marked me. 

“But I have turned the experience around and I love it has put in a space where I can help other people deal with it in a constructive way.”