Vanessa da Silva
Muamba Grove
23rd September - 30th December 2022
Encounter is delighted to announce that two sculptures from Vanessa da Silva’s widely-acclaimed and ongoing Muamba Grove series will soon be displayed in the garden space of Encounter’s new gallery at 15 Rua de São Bernardo in Lisbon. The exhibition opens on the 22 September and will run until 30 December 2022.
An acclaimed Brazilian artist, Da Silva’s work focuses on migration, identity, displacement and belonging, spanning a range of media including, sculpture, installation and performance. The inextricable link between the body and the sculptural is at the core of Da Silva’s practice, with the artist’s own figure entwined with the making of her amorphous organic forms. The artist’s practice frequently involves a process of carving sculptures concurrently, reacting to the forms intuitively as she works into their surface materials. Influenced by research into the politics of movement, many of her sculptures appear to oscillate between figuration and abstraction, fluid and solid. Constantly shape-shifting, the forms evoke an ongoing state of metamorphosis or transformation. It is the sense of movement inherent to the shapes of her sculptures that implicitly interrogates fixed notions of identity or rootedness.
Born in Brazil, Da Silva has lived and practiced in London for over ten years. Encounter’s Lisbon exhibition of Vanessa da Silva’s sculptures coincides with the display of two of her monumental Muamba Grove sculptures, launched at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in September 2022. Alongside this presentation the artist will also be participating in ‘De Montanas Submarinas el Fuego Hace Islas’ at Pivo Arte e Pesquisa in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
With thanks to Duarte Sequeira, Braga for the collaboration
Planning your Visit
Encounter, Rua de Sao Bernardo 15, RC, 1200 823, Estrela, Lisboa
Wednesday - Saturday 2-7pm and by appointment
Vanessa Da Silva
Vanessa da Silva was born in São Paulo, Brazil (1976), she lives and works in London. Her work includes sculpture, installation and performance focusing on issues of immigration, notions of territory, identity and displacement. Born and raised in Sao Paulo but living in London over a decade, da Silva reflects upon her own lived experiences as a Latin American immigrant in Europe to reconstruct her own consciousness of Brazilian identity and otherness, she is interested in the space between nationalities and the complicated borders where identities and cultures mix and meet, where divergent and conflicting ideas cohabit.
She holds an MA Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2017), and a BFA in Product Design from FAAP, São Paulo, Brazil (1999). In 2020, she received the Hopper Prize (USA), and in 2019 the Gilbert Bayes Award from the Royal Society of Sculptors (London), in 2017 she was awarded the Almacantar Studio Grant. She participated in the residences FAAP, São Paulo (2020), Pivô Research, São Paulo (2019) and Ox-Bow, USA (2017).
She has exhibited in the UK and internationally with most recent projects at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2022), 019 Gent, Ghent, Flag commission (2022) and La Casa Encendida, Devenir Isla, Madrid (2022). Upcoming exhibitions include MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK (2023). Solo Exhibitions: Muamba Grove, Frieze Sculpture, London (2021), Mamão com Açúcar, Artissima, Turin (2021), The Inner Rhythm of the Collective, Lungley Gallery, London (2021), Vertical Zen, Hospitalfield, Scotland (2019), Muamba Grove, Duarte Sequeira Gallery, Portugal (2019), Stranger than Paradise, StudioRCA Riverlight, London (2017). Selected Group Exhibitions: De Montañas Submarinas el Fuego Hace Islas, Pivô, São Paulo (2022), Sol, curated by Alexandre da Cunha, Marli Matsumoto Gallery, São Paulo (2022), Transient Roots, curated by Huma Kabakci, Sapling Gallery, London (2022), Female Voices of Latin America, Vortic Art, London (2021), Assembly Points, Public Gallery, London (2020), Four Flags, Jaqueline Martins Gallery, São Paulo (2020), Salon Acme, Mexico City (2020), Antifascismo Tropical, curated by Pablo León de la Barra, White Cubicle, London (2019), This Future is Unthinkable, Yet We Are Thinking It, Damien and the Love Guru, Brussels (2019), VIA Arts Prize, Embassy of Brazil, London (2018), Artworks Open curated by Tai Shani and Emma Talbot, Barbican Arts Trust, London (2018), ARCO Lisbon, Opening section curated by João Laia, Portugal (2018), I Am He As You Are She As You Are Me, curated by Kiki Mazzucchelli, House of Egorn, Berlin (2018), Herland, Bosse & Baum, London (2017), With Institutions Like This..., curated by Victor Wang, The Averard Hotel, London (2016).