This work reflects on Shinji Nagabe’s childhood experience as an effeminate boy—viada in Portuguese—growing up in a world that offered little space for difference. Named 'Dirceu' after a football player, an expectation of strength and masculinity he did not feel, he internalized a sense of being out of place. To survive, he created imaginary worlds where his sensitivity could exist freely.

Within Nagabe’s oeuvre, this piece resonates with his recurring exploration of identity, memory, and the tension between societal expectations and inner life. Like much of his work, it blends personal narrative with subtle metaphor, capturing both vulnerability and resilience. As he learned to conform, controlling gestures and erasing behaviors, the sensitive, expansive child he had been gradually receded. This piece serves as a memorial to that early self, highlighting the quiet endurance of difference and the imaginative spaces that allow it to flourish.