Digging Into Authenticity: Dig Ferreira's Four-Pillar World

How Dig Ferreira turned grief into a mouth-held brush and built four worlds from one body

By The Juicy Times Editorial Team

There's a Brazilian artist in Brooklyn who paints with his mouth.

Not because he has to. Because he chose to.

In 2016, after years of grinding in São Paulo's architecture scene and losing his mother, Dig Ferreira found himself creatively dead. When he tried to draw again, his hand wouldn't cooperate. So he tried his left hand. Then his feet. Then, intuitively, his mouth.

What started as a desperate experiment to reconnect with art became his signature: Doc-Drawing—a performative drawing technique using a Japanese sumi brush and ink held between his teeth, capturing moments in real time as both witness and participant.

Since then, Dig has taken this practice from São Paulo's streets to protests, festivals, exhibitions, and live events across Brazil, the U.S., and beyond, creating large-scale artworks that document the world as it unfolds.

But Doc-Drawing is just one of four pillars holding up Dig's world. The others? Forging wearable armor from second-hand clothes. Playing the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute. And dancing—something he's done since age 10.

This is what authentic world-building looks like when you refuse to choose.

The Map: Four Pillars, One World

Most artists are told to pick a lane. Dig built a highway system.

His work is structured around four core pillars: Doc-Drawing, Forging Armors, Shakuhachi, and Dance. These practices intertwine memory, ritual, body, and transformation into a singular artistic voice.

Pillar 1: Doc-Drawing — The Living Archive

Doc-Drawing emerged in a time of need—after years of not creating freely, Dig faced a significant loss of identity, exacerbated by grief after his mother's passing. He challenged himself to resume daily drawing practice. Initially, this proved extremely difficult, which led him to intuitively explore the use of other parts of the body, such as his left hand, feet, and notably, his mouth.

The technique: A Japanese sumi brush dipped in ink, held in his mouth, moving across large paper as moments unfold—concerts, protests, parties, street scenes. He doesn't sketch first. He doesn't correct. He acts as both witness and participant, documenting emotions and social environments in real time.

It's journalism meets meditation meets performance art. The body becomes the camera. The mouth becomes the lens.

After about five months of experimentation, mouth painting became a symbol of his artistic freedom and his decision to never abandon art again.

What it means for world-builders: When your usual tools fail, your body knows other paths. The "limitation" becomes the innovation.

Pillar 2: Forging Armors — Identity as Wearable Ritual

In Forging Armors, Dig explores identity, protection, and sustainability by transforming second-hand clothing into wearable art. These garments function as "armors"—symbolic, poetic, and functional—reflecting the body's resilience and the power of color as a healing force.

He takes thrifted clothes and reconstructs them into pieces that protect, transform, and announce. Not costumes. Armors—for bodies that need to move through the world differently.

Originally a personal ritual, the project now includes community participation, sparking collective reflection on fashion, consumption, and self-image.

In a world drowning in fast fashion, Dig asks: What if clothing wasn't just about looking good, but about becoming something? What if getting dressed was a daily ritual of self-protection and reinvention?

What it means for world-builders: Your tools, your aesthetics, your "look" aren't decoration—they're strategy. Build armor that helps you become who you need to be.

Pillar 3: Shakuhachi — Breath as Ancestor

His connection to the Shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese bamboo flute, adds a meditative and ancestral layer to his research. As a disciple of Sensei Akio Yamaoka (Nishakukai do Brazil), Dig studies Honkyoku pieces on both the 1.8 and 2.0 flutes, integrating breath, silence, and discipline into his broader practice.

The shakuhachi is not a performance instrument in the Western sense. It's a tool for meditation through breath. The player doesn't entertain—they become present.

For Dig, this practice roots his high-energy, performative work in stillness. The mouth that holds the brush also holds the flute. The same body that dances also sits in silence.

What it means for world-builders: Your world needs both fire and stillness. The discipline of the slow practice enables the freedom of the explosive one.

Pillar 4: Dance — The Body as Medicine

From an early age, art played a central role in Dig's life. Influenced by his cousins being professional hip-hop and street dancers, he immersed himself in the world of dance while still very young. His participation in his family's dance company allowed him to perform in some of the best theaters in Brasilia, to participate in competitions and shows that enriched his understanding of the performing arts.

Dance, present in his life since age 10, is the final foundation of his work. Movement serves as both ritual and medicine—a path to purify, liberate, and connect. Through the body, Dig explores emotional memory and spiritual expression, often incorporating dance into performances and artistic processes.

Dance isn't a side hobby. It's the root system beneath everything else—the original language of his body, the first way he learned to express what words couldn't.

What it means for world-builders: Your first language—the thing you did before you knew it was "art"—is probably your skeleton key. Return to it when you're lost.

The Journey: From Brasilia to Brooklyn, Via São Paulo

Dig was born in Planaltina-DF, near Brasília, Brazil, in a childhood rich in love and family support, though these cities offered few artistic opportunities and a notable lack of body and gender diversity.

At 18, he moved to São Paulo to attend university, and living in a large metropolis drastically expanded his view of the world.

He studied Interior Design at the Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo for two years, then completed his degree at the Istituto Europeo di Design. With a background in Interior Design from the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), Dig quickly rose through São Paulo's architecture scene.

Since the beginning of university, he had the opportunity to work in the area, progressing quickly and working in the main architecture and design offices in the city. He also founded his own studio, EPICENTRO, where he developed residential and commercial projects, as well as scenography.

But success in architecture came at a cost. Years of an exhausting and stressful routine in São Paulo suppressed his free creative expression, leading to a significant loss of identity.

Then his mother died.

And the brush found his mouth.

He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, where he continues to expand his artistic practice.

The Integration: Why Four Pillars Work Better Than One

Here's what makes Dig's approach a world instead of a portfolio:

1. Each pillar feeds the others.
The discipline of shakuhachi practice brings focus to the spontaneity of Doc-Drawing. The dance background makes his body-based art authentic. The armor-making gives his visual work a three-dimensional, wearable life.

2. They all share the same core question:
How do we document, protect, and transform the body's experience of being alive?

Doc-Drawing documents moments.
Forging Armors protects and transforms identity.
Shakuhachi connects breath to ancestors.
Dance liberates emotion into space.

3. They're all rituals, not products.
Together, these four pillars form an integrated language of presence, resistance, and poetic documentation—a living archive of life itself.

Dig isn't selling art prints (though you can buy them). He's offering participation in a worldview where art isn't decoration—it's survival, documentation, and transformation.

The Authenticity Principle: What World-Builders Learn From Dig

If you met Dig at a party and asked "What do you do?", what would he say?

"I'm a mouth-painting, armor-forging, flute-playing, dancing multidisciplinary artist from Brazil living in Brooklyn"?

Most career advisors would tell him to simplify. Pick one thing. Get focused.

But authenticity isn't simplification—it's integration.

Dig's world works because of the four pillars, not in spite of them. Removing any one would collapse the structure.

The Dig Ferreira Authenticity Framework:

1. Follow the body's intuition when the mind fails.
When his hand wouldn't draw, his mouth did. Trust the body's alternative routes.

2. Turn personal rituals into public practice.
Forging Armors started as self-protection. Now it's community transformation.

3. Let disciplines cross-pollinate.
Interior design training shows up in his spatial awareness during live drawing. Dance shows up in the gesture of the brush. Shakuhachi breath control shows up in performance endurance.

4. Document the journey as the art itself.
His Doc-Drawing project is literally titled "documentary drawing." The archive is the work.

5. Don't choose between spiritual depth and practical skill.
He studies traditional Japanese flute meditation and sells wearable art and performs at festivals. Both-And-More.

The Call: What Dig's World Asks of Yours

Dig Ferreira's world has a question for yours:

What are you refusing to integrate?

What's the "weird hobby" you keep separate from your "real work"?
What's the skill you learned as a kid that you've abandoned as an adult?
What's the ritual you do alone that you're afraid to make public?

Dig took mouth-painting—a desperate experiment in a dark moment—and turned it into his signature.
He took thrift-store shopping and turned it into Forging Armors.
He took childhood dance and made it the foundation of everything.

Authenticity isn't about finding your "one thing."
It's about building the structure that lets all your things work together.

That's what makes a world instead of a project.
That's what makes an artist instead of a hustler.
That's what Digging Into Authenticity actually means.

Where to Find Dig's Worlds

Website: dig-ferreira.com
Instagram: @digferreira
Doc-Drawing Events: @doc_drawing_events
Shop: shop.dig-ferreira.com

Currently based: Brooklyn, New York
Available for: Live drawing events, commissions, collaborations, wearable art, performances

This is part of Juicy Times' "Worlds To Watch" series—documenting the humans building coherent universes instead of scattered projects. Want your world featured? Nominate yourself here.