Since the 1990s, Laura Lima (Governador Valadares, Brazil, 1971) has been developing a radical and unclassifiable body of work, whose poetic force lies in the use of the living body — human, animal, or vegetal — as artistic material. Rejecting conventional categories such as “performance” or “installation,” her practice proposes sensorial and unpredictable situations in which the audience, time, and space operate as integral components of the work.
Her pieces involve bodies in action, specific tasks, garments, objects, and architectural environments, and they refuse documentation as a substitute for direct experience. For the artist, photographic or video images only make sense when constructed as artworks in themselves — never as records. Taking “carnality” as both starting point and engine of invention, she is concerned with complex social relations, everyday behaviors, and the threshold between art and life. Her works are not about representation, but about presence. She has created a unique vocabulary grounded in the materiality of the body, ephemerality, and the development of rigorous procedures that unfold into poetic and philosophical experiments. Each work is accompanied by a detailed modus operandi — a kind of score that guides future execution without deviation, reinforcing the belief in art as an autonomous system of rules and fictions.
Throughout her career, Lima has contributed to expanding the glossary of contemporary art with propositions that demand radical attention from the viewer and an experience that transcends the image. Deeply attuned to art history, her body of work emerges as a critical and inventive response to what that history has yet to name.
Solo exhibitions include: How To Eat The Sun and The Moon, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2024); Balé Literal, MACBA Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain (2023); A viagem d_s que não foram, Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); 6 Feet Over, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2021); Réu Hell, Baile do Sarongue, Museu do Amanhã, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020); Balé Literal, A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020); I hope this finds you well, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, USA (2019); Wrong Drawings, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2018); Alfaiataria, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2018); Cavalo come Rei, Fondazione Prada, Milan (2018); The Inverse, ICA Miami (2016).
Selected group exhibitions include: Boston Public Art Triennial, USA (2025); Vai, vai, Saudade, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2024); Opened the Curtain to See What Lays Behind, Gebauer Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2024); Color is the First Revelation of the World, Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, USA (2024); The Lives of Animals, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium (2024); To Weave the Sky: Textile Abstractions from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23, Miami, USA (2023); Witch Hunt, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2021); Sharjah Biennial 14, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2019); Busan Biennale (2018); Aichi Triennale, Toyohashi (2016); Performa 15, New York (2015); 15 Rooms, Long Museum, Shanghai (2015).
Her work is included in the collections of: CACI Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, Brazil; MAM Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil; Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Switzerland; and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil.