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Laura Lima joins Andrea Nitsche-Krupp, Exhibitions Curator, in an engaging conversation about Lima's distinctive practice and the development of her first solo exhibition in London.
Since the mid-90s, Lima has become recognised for her evolving artworks which explore the relationship between bodies and their environment, questioning social expectations and accepted hierarchies by staging live situations where people, objects and spaces interact in unconventional ways.
The conversation will explore how Lima’s newly commissioned work The Drawing Drawing is situated within her practice and longstanding enquiry into the relations between body, image and spectator, with an opportunity for questions from the audience.
Since the mid-90s, Lima has become recognised for her evolving artworks which explore the relationship between bodies and their environment, questioning social expectations and accepted hierarchies by staging live situations where people, objects and spaces interact in unconventional ways.
The conversation will explore how Lima’s newly commissioned work The Drawing Drawing is situated within her practice and longstanding enquiry into the relations between body, image and spectator, with an opportunity for questions from the audience.
Bio
For over three decades Laura Lima has created work that initiates the circumstances for an encounter. Neither performance nor strictly sculpture, Lima’s work prioritises ambiguity, displacement, and productive estrangement. Since 1994 when she led a cow from her pasture onto Ipanema Beach, she has been developing a rigorous conceptual practice that materialises across diverse matter and form. Often incorporating live elements and instruction-based methods, her works tend to unfold independently of the artist’s control. At its core, Lima’s practice seeks to give visual form to philosophical concerns, asking us to reconsider what we assume to be stable or self-evident.
Audience and performer bodies are integral to Lima’s sculptural situations, functioning variously as medium, concept, material, or political presence. A key principle in her practice is the equal consideration of all forms — living and non-living — as sculptural matter, rejecting hierarchies of agency or value. In work that places us in a position to examine human relationships and unmask social norms, Lima always poses open questions and embraces uncertainty as an integral part of her practice.
Born in 1971, Laura Lima grew up in Brazil’s countryside region of Governador Valadares. While still very young, Lima moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she is currently based. The artist received a BA in Philosophy from the State University of Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s and also studied art the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro. In 1999, she founded the Organism RhR (Representative hyphen Representative) and served as its first bureaucratic administrator. As such, Lima created a glossary and an archive of the activities of the group, including ideas such as a philosophy of nothing, the non-functional, emptiness, and failure.
Lima’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in institutions around the world such as MACBA Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Spain (2023); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2018); Pinacoteca (Octágono), São Paulo (2018); ICA Miami (2016); SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2015); Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2015); Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste, Fortaleza, Brazil (2015); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands (2014); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2013); Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2013); MUAC, Mexico City (2013); Foundation Eva Klabin, Rio de Janeiro (2012); among others. Lima presented a major outdoor installation in the 2025 Boston Public Art Triennial. Her works are held in numerous important collections, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Instituto Inhotim, Brazil; Modern Art Museum of São Paulo; Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden; Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Switzerland; Zabludowicz Collection; and the Bonnefantenmuseum, The Netherlands, among others.
Book tickets
06:45 pm
Wed, 28 Jan 2026
Nash and Brandon Rooms
Ticket information
- All tickets that do not require ID (full price, disabled, income support) can be printed at home or stored in email
- For aged-based concession tickets (under 25, student) please bring relevant ID to collect at the front desk before the event.
Wed 28 Jan, 6:45pm
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