Vamos Brincar: Returning to play as creative practice

Vamos Brincar (Portuguese for ‘Let’s play’) marks a clear departure in the work of Yuri Pailman. Shaped in Johannesburg, long a site of observation, refuge, and becoming, the project reflects a city that has held space for queer creativity to unfold slowly, intuitively, and on its own terms. Fashion emerges not as spectacle, but as a language of self-understanding and survival.

Conceived through conversations with close creative collaborators, Vamos Brincar begins with a simple question: What is the first memory of our creativity? The answer returns to childhood, to scrapbooks and magazine cut-outs, imagined worlds and instinct-led making. A time before rules, before limitation, where creation existed purely as play.

Revisiting that freedom, Pailman and his chosen family construct a shared creative playground, one led by intuition, curiosity, and joy. Each contributor brings their craft into a collective world guided by innocence rather than outcome.

At its core, Vamos Brincar is a meditation on creative innocence and chosen family, an invitation to remember the fearless imagination we once had, and to return to the idea that creation, at its purest, is play.