I am a Reflector in Human Design. I naturally transmute the depth of my experiences into poetic beauty. Soul Portraits is how I share this gift with others.

THAIS AQUINO

Artist, Photographer, Muse.

Thais is an international Artist and Photographer, born and raised in Brasil and known for her signature work Soul Portraits. Thais has worked in the effervescent advertising industry in New York for 5 years, shooting campaigns for L’Oréal, Garnier, Bloomingdales, Coca-Cola, Glow Recipe and several hotels including The Fairmont Los Angeles and The William Valle Hotel. Thais has photographed Hollywood celebrities like Jessica Alba and Yaya DaCosta and has her photography work published in top magazines, such as PopSugar, Refinery29, Glamour, OprahDaily, W Magazine, Huffpost, ABCNews, British Vogue, USA Today, Parents and more.

I am a traveling soul, global nomad, international artist. I’ve been pollinating multi-cities and communities over the last decade. I have lived in many different high vibrational ‘hubs’ after I left the city that raised me for most of my life, Rio de Janeiro. My soul-land is Bahia, Brasil. Brooklyn has raised me as an independent artist very powerfully, Maui has held me in scandalous truth, beauty and powerful waters over the past couple of years. I am so grateful for being able to greet and create with so many lands that called my name and I called theirs. I invest in long sacred pauses and water pilgrimages as part of my energetic and artistic cultivation. I am able to find connections in far corners of this planet and stay in connection with my home-body as I travel through lands and peoples. I can easily meet people where they are. I’ve been intentionally offering soul portraits at beautiful destinations as I collaborate with incredible (truly one of a kind, highly inspiring) artists and leaders around the world, sharing what is alive for me, meeting what is alive for them and together we create a new field, fruit of our shared cultivation, natural gifts and seasonal interests.

One could say I am a realized artist and I am very comfortable, connected, intimate with the energy of Soul Portraits. I take space when I talk about it, it’s no small thing for me. However, in full honesty, I come from a lived experience of intense hiding, silence, prolonged contraction and inability to express. To voice something was terrifying for most of my life. Photography came to me as a gift from the imaginarium prolific world of blessings as a code to a language my soul needed to express in order to even make sense of this world.

So. It’s pretty deep how I feel about this art and how I cultivate my energy and mainly ancestral access to myself to be able to keep channeling such nuances in photography and holding a field for my clients that allow them to do the same. To come out of hiding. Be curious about their expression. Be in that felt knowing that our bodies have things to say and recognize the desire to take action, orient towards expressing it.

Saying yes to Soul Portraits is a full spectrum contract with the unseen world. It has changed my life entirely. What really fascinates me about this art form is how the primary invitation is to allow oneself to be seen. And that’s pretty raw! And rad! Photography is for the feelings. It’s a couragous act of endless beauty and I am always enchanted by the result.

My journey with photography is a journey of UNHIDING.

One of our deepest fears and greatest desires is to be seen.

I always felt very vulnerable and fragile, intimidated by everything and everyone, so afraid of being rejected and always longing to be accepted. My struggle is now a gift. I love the vulnerability in photography! It’s what attracts me to it. And I love to see people discovering hidden-precious parts of themselves and overcoming their mind-limitations. For me, photography can be a powerful tool for healing and transformation if you allow it to be.

Aversion to photography is aversion to our own mystery (and beauty)

Soul Portraits is a
de-colonial practice

What makes me a great photographer is not my technicality or proximity to ‘goddess’ or ‘spiritual’ aesthetics. But the deep alchemical mythopoetic stories that I have been excavating for a long time, the imaginative layers of the deep thinker and feeler I am, the experienced witnesser, the global citizen of multi-realities, stories and cultures, it’s my capacity to attune to the rhythm of a living being from a place of emptiness of self that comes from the cultivation of a precise energy field that creates a clear creative channel.

The new world I am building is a collaboration with incredible artists and leaders around the world, sharing what is alive for me, meeting what is alive for them and together we create a new field, fruit of our shared cultivation, natural gifts and seasonal interests.

When I am making images, with clients, editing them and being in that transmission portal, I am receiving and decoding full ancestral messages they always come as a gift. Someone’s energy field, a memory, an aspect of their wisdom, the particular way of their body’s response to nature, their aliveness, a gaze that carries stories, a heart with desires, a deep inner-knowing… for me, to hold space for the soul to speak during a Soul Portrait session, is to listen to ancestral messages, it is to create space for de-colonial practices. It’s a homecoming.

Brazilian born and raised
Clear vision soulful artist
Medicine artist in photography
Collection of multi-cultural experiences
Authentic nomadic living
Ruled by Venus all the way
Reflector by nature (human design)
Over 12+ years in photography
Sun in libra sag rising moon in cancer
Power to distill and put things together
A sacred witness to +300 sessions

I am a Brazilian transient creative being, soul-traveling through lands, peoples and hearts, remembering, grieving, celebrating, resourcing, dreaming and loving every step along the way.

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