Exhibition Review • We are walking birds

Brazilian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia • Arts of the Working Class

In 120 years of the Venice Biennale and the ups and downs of national representations, it is the first time that Brazil's official participation is exclusively created and curated by Indigenous artists. The pavilion has been symbolically renamed from being “Brazilian” to being “Hãhãwpuá”, stressing that Portuguese is as secondary as any national state label. Brazilian identity and the Portuguese language are, however, taken over not by one Indigenous replacement, but by many... read more.

Routes to longing with Hsi-Nong Huang

Hsi-Nong Huang: Ships Passing, 4 May–13 July 2024, London

There are some predictable associations that the combination of wood and metal may lead to: porosity and impermeability, natural and industrial. In my recent correspondence with Hsi-Nong, we spoke about family and I started to see family too in these sculptures, though not in any obvious way. I am thinking about a negotiation between tradition and movement, between openness and care (despite none of these being obvious dichotomies), and about various notions of future... read more.

Exhibition Review • Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life at Serpentine Gallery, London • ArtNexus print issue nº121

Just as our climate emergency demands action, Tomas Saraceno’s exhibition at the Serpentine asks for commitment. By the entrance, a manifesto is available to those who commit to cycling through its entirety. Pedaling a stationed bike generates the energy that sends the recording into a headphone, in an immediate transaction. No compromises: any pause would interrupt the audio, requiring it to restart. Inside the gallery, everybody is encouraged to give up their phones during the visit. Far from mindfulness, the exercise is one of pronouncing awareness, drawing attention to our individual implication in the exploitation of lithium, which, turns out, most of us had in our pockets... read more.

Vandria Borari Yupirungáwa

Artist Liaison • Vandria Borari residency and new commission for Invisible Flock exhibition This is a Forest – LEEDS 2023

A one-year long collaboration liaising with the artist, from initial workshops and consultations until securing a commission and developing a plan to produce the work in the UK, support through the residency, and exhibition installation...read more.

What also defines a forest...

Research for Invisible Flock’s exhibition This is a Forest commissioned by LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture

Research Ideveloped over the course of 2023 on a range of definitions for terms that translate back to the English word forest. Definitions spanned from pragmatic understandings of what defines a forest, and specific criterias, to figurative uses of language and poetic readings. Presented as a range, they offer an insight into nuances that give away the varied perspectives from the languages and cultures that shape them..... read more.

Land Body Ecologies

Research, Art, Environment, Human Rights

Hub resident at Wellcome Collection, Land Body Ecologies is a transdisciplinary research network employing artistic approaches, design research and storytelling to explore human experiences and relationships with the environment....continue reading.

Exhibition Review • Maxwell Alexandre

Nuevo poder: pasabilidad – Maxwell Alexandre at La Casa Encendida, Madrid • ArtNexus print issue nº120

Maxwell Alexandre. Nuevo poder: pasabilidad. La Casa Encendida, Galerna, 2023. © Courtesy of La Casa Encendida.

Maxwell Alexandre. Nuevo poder: pasabilidad. La Casa Encendida, Galerna, 2023. © Courtesy of La Casa Encendida.

Maxwell Alexandre. Nuevo poder: pasabilidad. La Casa Encendida, Galerna, 2023. © Courtesy of La Casa Encendida.

Painting over brown paper is Maxwell Alexandre’s bread-and-butter but no less worthy of attention or praise: in the country Alexandre comes from, this type of paper is called pardo, a shade of brown rather vaguely positioned between.... continue reading.

Ana Hupe at ESCALA • Footnotes to a triangular cartography

Acquisition of artwork for the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America

Ana Hupe ‘Notas de rodapé para uma cartografia triangular’ (2019). © Courtesy of Ana Hupe.

Ana Hupe ‘Notas de rodapé para uma cartografia triangular’ (2019). © Courtesy of Ana Hupe.

Ana Hupe ‘Notas de rodapé para uma cartografia triangular’ (2019). © Courtesy of Ana Hupe.

In a format that alludes to school books and classic displays of ethnography museums, each of the three main panels that composes Ana Hupe’s Notas de Rodapé para uma Cartografia Triangular [Footnotes to a Triangular Cartography] presents a correspondence between three elements...continue reading.

Journal of Climate Change

Land Body Ecologies: A case study for global transdisciplinary collaboration at the intersections of environment and mental health

Co-author of article on transdisciplinarity for peer-reviewed academic journal, writing the sections on Creative Methodologies and Language...read more.

Tangled Tongues / Lenguas Enredadas

Zine collectively produced by seven authors adopting Spanglish as a medium to challenge linguistic and colonial boundaries. Developed as a result of a series of workshops with the same title carried out in 2023, initiated and run by Anahí Saravia Herrera and Nathalia Samhil Gonzalez Gutierrez. Cover design and illustrations are by Francesca Maria Asprella...continue reading.

Silent Spring at Luciana Brito Galeria

Curated by Alexia Tala, curatorial assistance by Cecilia VilelaOctober–December 2023
Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo, Brazil

Grounded in curatorial research focused on art produced by Indigenous artists from Latin America, Primavera Silenciosa [Silent Spring] proposes a coexistence with other artistic expressions deeply rooted in traditions related to their places of origin. Artists on show celebrate plurality and a relationship with nature defined by careful listening, while also holding space open for critical scrutiny.... continue reading.

Memory Georamas

Curated for SP-Arte 2021 Online Viewing Rooms, by Cecilia Vilela and Ana Roman
Commissioned by Piscina, a Brazilian platform for women artists

Georama is a hollow globe, in which the Earth's surface is represented as a concave sphere. In the 19th century, georamas were an attraction for curious onlookers who were invited to perceive this surface from a different perspective. In this selection of works, we gather poetics from artists who construct and reveal their own instruments to alter the perception of the physical world and the landscape that surrounds us: in their majority, the works deal with displacement – physical or otherwise – which entails an understanding of a temporality that goes beyond the scale of human life on the planet... continue reading.

LBE Reading Circle

London Hub at Wellcome Collection, London • June 2022 – March 2023

A reading circle for non-experts, hosted by the London-based team of Land Body Ecologies at the Hub at Wellcome Collection. A space for introductory and inclusive conversation, welcoming all levels of knowledge for exchange...read more.

LBE Shared Principles

Stemming from the first Land Body Ecologies team workshop, the Shared Principles were developed by Sheila Ghelani and Cecilia Vilela, alongside the wider LBE team through discussion and collaboration. These are seven principles that aim to anchor, guide, and inspire the working together carried out by research network Land Body Ecologies… read more.

British Library Voices of Art

Translation to Portuguese • Guy Brett: Ideas in motion by Hester Westley

Interview and tribute essay to Guy Brett... read more.

Us and them: On responses to the environment and our proximity to the other

Catalogue of the 22 Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala

Antonio Pichillá Personaje Llamado Martín, 2017. Handmade textile, paraffin candles and stone. Image courtesy of the artist and Galería Extra, Ciudad de Guatemala.

No one in a healthy state of mind doubts their own status as a person. But how similar to ourselves are we willing to allow the other to be? The criteria chosen to grant the status of personhood to beings other than ourselves can help reveal how a culture relates to the world around it. In Western societies, the attribution of personhood tends to bring along a set of generally agreed-on attributions of moral consideration.... continue reading.

Cecilia Vilela

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