Brazil
Shibari in Brazil is taught in Portuguese: dedicated studios in São Paulo since 2017, workshops in Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba, a Brasília collective's exhibition in 2020 and the Nakama Nawa weekend, in its third edition in 2026.
Cities
Numbers show studios and communities.
Coming up in Brazil
Regular events
Shibari in Brazil
Dedicated rope studios in Brazil are recent, and most of what the sources document happens in São Paulo. How Japanese rope spread from Japan to the rest of the world is told in Kinbaku goes global; this page sketches the Brazilian outline.
The first studios
The best-documented early career is that of Akira Nawa. According to her school, she began tying in 2011, studied shibari more seriously from 2013, decided in 2016 to make her living from it, and in 2017 opened Estúdio Karada, which the school calls the first shibari studio in Brazil. In 2024 she opened a new space in São Paulo to give the community a firmer base and her teaching a more structured home.
A second São Paulo project set out to fill a gap in teaching materials. Shibari House Brasil began in January 2021 with the aim of offering safe, informative material on shibari in Portuguese, and later that year released a full online course for beginners. Its workshops and performances have taken it to Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba as well as São Paulo, and it contributed techniques, advice and products to the Netflix series Olhar Indiscreto (2023). Both projects are described in the São Paulo guide.
Beyond São Paulo
Rope also appears in the capital’s art world. In March and April 2020 the gallery A Pilastra in Brasília showed Nawa Yoi – O bêbado de cordas, the first solo exhibition of the group Coletivo Shibari, with drawings, photographs, objects and a sensory space. The listing described the group as a community of people of different ages and professions and said its study group had met more than fifty times. The workshops planned alongside the show were suspended.
A shibari weekend
Nakama Nawa, a shibari weekend in São Paulo, reached its third edition in September 2026. It paired an exhibition of independent artists and three performances with a workshop for couples and an open jam, and its guest teacher was the rigger and model Gorgone, a co-founder of the online school Shibari Study, on her first visit to Brazil.
Language
Classes, websites and event listings are in Portuguese. For what to expect at a first class, see What happens at a first shibari class.