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Over the past three decades, Brazilian designers have applied Amerindian forms of knowledge to their processes and practices of research and design. This approach allows designers to apply agency models in which innovation is integrated with the traditional values and the ecology of knowledge of indigenous peoples. In this study, we use Rodrigo Almeida’s Subliminar (2018) and Exu (2019), a performance art piece, as the basis for reflecting on two issues addressed by Alfred Gell (2018): style and agency. Our main objective in this study is to reflect on how the process of ancestralization in design questions the distinctions between handicraft, art, and design. Finally, we look at the role of ritual in the transfiguration of the object into an artifact.