27 January – 29 March 2026

The Drawing Drawing is the first solo exhibition in London by Brazilian multidisciplinary artist Laura Lima (b. 1971, Governador Valadares, Brazil).

Widely exhibited internationally, Lima’s category-defying practice has explored the relationship between living beings, sites, material and time since the 1990s.

Across the Lower and Upper Galleries, The Drawing Drawing brings together a concise selection of works spanning Lima’s evolving practice to the present day. The exhibition shares its title with a major site-specific commission that hijacks the conventions of a life drawing class. In Lima’s version, in which a life model and artists slowly and unpredictably orbit one another on mechanised platforms, the positions of subject and object, and accompanying ideas of faithful representation and mastery, are put into question. 

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Lima’s practice is led by ontological and epistemological questions like: Where does meaning lie? What influences how we interact with one another? How does perspective shape reality?

Prioritising process over outcome, Lima’s work begins with philosophical inquiry rather than specific form. This approach yields unpredictable, generously poetic, often funny work, which, by unsettling our habits of seeing and acting, is also fundamentally political.

Alongside the exhibition’s titular work, performative sculptural works from various stages of Lima's surprising career trace the development of the ideas that inform The Drawing Drawing. On view in the Lower Galleries, Ascenseur is a work first conceived in 2013. It consists of a simple action involving three elements: an arm, a set of keys, and a wall that doesn’t quite reach the floor. The artwork relates to the artist’s concept of person=flesh, where straightforward instructions are used to treat animate beings as material elements (alongside objects, sites, and social conditions).

In the Upper Galleries, three works continue The Drawing Drawing’s emphasis on process, presenting earlier distillations of Lima’s artistic preoccupation with contingency, relationality and temporality. Parasol Deux, (2023/2026) is a large upside-down parasol that dances through the gallery accompanied by a new audio composition by Lima and the Brazilian artist and composer Ricardo Siri. Parasol Deux is one of the ‘ballerinas’ from Lima’s acclaimed Balé Literal, for which Lima choreographed objects, machinery, and various artefacts for an evolving absurdist dance. Presented for the first time since 1993, is one of Lima’s earliest works, Congeladas [Frozen Images] comprised of three-dimensional images frozen in ice. The Wrong Drawing (2084) is the most recent in a group of woven works that bear a future date: the artist’s estimate of when the web of cotton thread with coal – altered by time, temperature, humidity – might reasonably be considered finished. Together, they demonstrate how Lima’s work unfolds as a living web of relationships between viewer, site, material, and time.

The works on view are deliberately provisional and deformalised – favouring the fragile and the fleeting over the certain or spectacular. Lima directs us to wait, look to the periphery, and find meaning in the unexpected. Through this mode of engagement, they solicit both epistemological questions – how we see and understand the world – and political ones, asking where hope might be found in times of uncertainty.

About the artist

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.

Acknowledgements

This exhibition was made possible through the collaboration and support of many individuals. Special thanks to Yoann Saura, Augusto Pizzarro, Ricardo Siri, PoloMaker, Solar, Vinicius Pinto Rosa, Raquel Dohler, Goodman Gallery, A Gentil Carioca, Luisa Strina Gallery, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

Thanks to the invaluable participation of The Drawing Drawing life models: Agatha Hergest, Andrew Ingamells, Miia Lasalahti, Olia Poliakova, and Reina Yoda.

The exhibition is essentially supported by the in-gallery team: Maya Baker, Laurelle Bedeau-Rider, Ellen Clarke-Quy, Constança De Menezes Coelho, Noémi Dignat, Evan Grandidge de Paz, Anna Hughes, Chloe Langlois, Oluwatobi Makinde, Marina Miranda Martinez Baez, Thornton Phongsopa, Charlotte Santos-Goldsworthy, Chiara Van Den Hoven, Amy Wilkinson, Bevis Wu and Freya Yeates, with the support of Katherine Corner, Simone De Villiers, Milo L’Estrange, Scott Rimington, Richard Short, and Maciej Stelmach.

With thanks for their critical installation work: Alex Brenchley, Charly Blackburn, Will Clifford, Lohan Emanuel, Michael Henley, Max Pevsner, Dave Ronalds, Joby Williamson, and Denise Woods. And the contributions of Nicola Leong, Steven Cairns, and the full ICA team.

With further thanks to those yet to be mentioned from Laura Lima’s studio: Alê Costa, Solange Costa, Joanna Giglio, Noemi Jachinta, Clara Lua, Marina Ramalho, Thaís Medeiros, Antonia Muricy, and Eloy Vergara. And Yago Pereira Campello, Luís André Costa de Paula, Carlos Lobão de Oliveira.

Supporters

Laura Lima: The Drawing Drawing is supported by the British Council and Instituto Guimarães Rosa, Brazil as part of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025-26, a year-long cultural programme between the two countries; Art Fund; and Henry Moore Foundation.

Tue to Sun: 12 – 8pm
Pay what you can: 12 – 1pm 
Tickets are available for 1 hour slots

The exhibition includes artworks involving human participants. The installation in the Lower Gallery, The Drawing Drawing, will have a nude model at various times throughout the day.

Before you visit the exhibition, please note:

Artist's Film Picks: Bacurau (2019)
Sun 8 Feb, 1:45pm

Life Drawing in Motion with artist Tegen Williams
Thu 19 Feb, 6pm

Artist's Film Picks: Limite + shorts
Sun 22 Feb, 1:30pm

Members' Curator Tour
Thu 26 Feb, 6pm

Artist's Film Picks: Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964)
Sun 1 Mar, 2pm

Life Drawing in Motion with artist Tegen Williams
Thu 12 Mar, 6pm

Additional programme to be announced, including a discursive event in partnership with Rio-based independent art space Solar dos Abacaxis.


Exhibition Preview
Mon 26 Jan, 7:30pm

Artist Talk: Laura Lima
Wed 28 Jan, 6:45pm

Access information

• Limited step-free access to the Upper Gallery. To use the lift, please speak to a member of staff at the Box Office.
• There is a wheelchair-accessible ramp into the Lower Gallery
• We provide Sensory Maps and Large Print Guides, these can be found at the information & sales desk
• Free for visitors where ticket prices are a barrier, please email access@ica.art

If you have other access requirements, need more info, or want to contact us, go to the Access Page.