[1] Her artwork aims to “address the relations established with her life experience and questions about the other's body in dialogue with her own.” [2] She is considered by O Globo as one of the most prominent artists in Brazilian contemporary art.

Panmela, who calls herself a mixed-race woman in Brazil, was raised as a white girl by her conservative lower-middle-class family in Penha, Rio de Janeiro.

Her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth, faced a series of financial difficulties and experienced some episodes of domestic violence with her first husband until she decided to run away and marry another man, who provided her with a more dignified life and raised Panmela as a daughter.

[4] In a destabilized family environment, Panmela abandoned her parents' house and decided to live in Manguinhos, known as one of the most dangerous favelas in the city.

Today, Panmela promotes hers mission in different parts of the world by sharing its vision through lectures, exhibitions, and workshops, at festivals, forums, and conferences - from the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Ayara Family, Manifesto Festival, FASE and Caramundo.

In 2012 she was honored by the Diller Von Furstenberg Family Foundation with the DVF Awards of the famous fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg along with other women such as Oprah Winfrey, she entered the list of Newsweek Magazine as one of the 150 women who are "shaking" in the world and in 2017 was named in W Magazine list of 18 names of new generation activists who are making a difference.