Ein your critical text for the exhibition To the mineral spirits, Luana Vitra, at Paranaense Museum, singer Anelis Assunção recalls that, “raised on the iron that constitutes the Minas Gerais soil of her existence”, the artist is anchored in this materiality. “From her great-grandfather from Minas Gerais and an entire family linked to metals and minerals that predate her body, to the current momentum pushing her towards this transformative and metalinguistic excursion, Luana carries in her blood the iron that guarantees her health and sustenance”, she writes.
At MUPA, this transformative and metalinguistic journey that Anelis talks about materializes in works such as drawings and sculptures, some of them never before seen, in which Luana uses iron, copper, lead and also clay to, in a poetic machination, daydream about the affectivity and transcendence of minerals.
The invitation to exhibit at MUPA was made prior to the 35th São Paulo Biennial, in which Luana participated. Opened in October, To the mineral spirits will be on display until March next year, at the Lange room in Morretes. For Gabriela Bettega, director of the Museu Paranaense, one of the greatest challenges of this solo exhibition by Luana Vitra at the institution was “translating the artist’s singular poetics” into the museum’s exhibition space, preserving the symbolic complexity and sensory intensity of her works.
“This was reflected in the creation of a very specific expography, including the construction of an oval space for the enjoyment of the work To the mineral spirits, which gives the exhibition its title, as well as in the fruitful collaboration with local artisans for the modeling of pieces in copper, brass and steel”, says the director, arte!brasileiros.
Gabriela also emphasizes that the exhibition engages in an unusual dialogue with MUPA “by reimagining the material and immaterial narratives” present in the museum. “While archaeological and historical collections are often understood as human and mineral remains from a scientific and chronological perspective, Luana Vitra’s work leads us to a field of poetic possibilities, where time is not linear and materials carry voices and memories that transcend their utilitarian function.”
When discussing the work Magma, for example, Luana Vitra explains that the work is based on research that has interested her in the past. The artist states that the iron found in Brazil, as well as in part of the African continent, arose from a geological event, from “a huge eruption” that happened a long time ago. “I keep thinking about the affective nature of this matter, of this center of the planet that is inflamed, and I understand this iron as the affection of the Earth that overflows,” says Luana, arte!brasileiros.
“The exhibition then goes through the physical, chemical, spiritual and emotional aspects of the materials. From this, I choose the elements that I will use and the way in which they relate to each other. I have been thinking about the rise of matter, in a spiritual dimension, and the emotional dynamics, which run through most of the exhibition, as in the case of Clamps, series that is linked to the affectivity of materials”, he continues.
As much as Magma, Earth Exhaustion is one of the unpublished works taken to MUPA. But Luana's investigation moves to another mineral, lead, which she had already worked with in the series Until something thinks me inside (2021), with the material as it is used in fishing. In her new creations, the artist used lead sheets, metal sheets used as shielding in radiology rooms. She uses the material only once in her career, in the solo show Live and die by the mouth, curated by Germano Dushá, made in 2023 at Galeria Bruno Múrias, in Lisbon.
“Lead is one of my favorite metals. It’s softer, and you can bend it or even sew it like a slightly stiffer fabric,” she explains. After cutting the sheets, Luana sewed them together with copper wire, which she suggests is an allusion to a scar, or the memory of a crack that “will always remain there, to some extent, even after a suture.”
Luana ponders that she always thinks of iron as skin, because she understands that it is the material closest to herself. “The way I reflect on the mineral kingdom is always linked, to some extent, to the way I understand my own body,” she says. “And my understanding of the mineral body echoes what I understand about myself. It is a relationship that mirrors itself. This comes from the path I have in dance, before the arts.”
Copper, says the artist, brings her the idea of love, due to its conductivity. “And, for the same reason, because it is a bridge, it leads me to the notion of the spiritual dynamics of matter. Copper is also a bridge when we think of welding. It facilitates these transmission relationships,” she argues.
Luana makes a point of emphasizing that the drawings presented at MUPA are “similar in imagery to others” that she has already done, as in the case of the ceramics presented in the installation Line of Business (2023), mounted last year at Galeria Marcenaria, at Instituto Inhotim. This time, however, the interventions are made on paper, with copper paste. But, in both cases, she says, the works have “dynamics linked to an idea of the ascending matter”.
“At Inhotim, I was thinking about this ascension that occurs through rotation, through chemical gestures, which can lead to an elevation process,” he explains. “This time, I was fantasizing about the equation for this movement, not based on real facts. I think about how this could happen, in the realm of imagination, without providing answers, but expanding the questions.”
TRAJECTORY
Luana Vitra was born in 1995 in Contagem, an industrial city in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte (MG). She graduated in 2018 with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the Guignard School (UEMG). Her works are in the collections of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo and the Museu de Arte da Pampulha, in Belo Horizonte, among others. In the middle of last year, she received the Pipa Award, the most important in the field in Brazil. Her resume includes, among others, a solo exhibition at the Centro Cultural São Paulo (Three Wars in the Chest, 2020) and group shows at MAM Rio (Acts of Revolt, 2022) and Sesc Belenzinho (of the Brazils.
Luana explains that the choices made for the exhibition at the Curitiba museum also reflect her desire to write her first book, which “extends beyond the exhibition, in order to think about other work relationships” throughout her career. “It’s like a gesture of looking back, and seeing a little of everything I had done, and picking up on some points that had been left a little loose over time,” she says. The artist chose not to hire a curator to design the exhibition or write the book. She also preferred to invite singer Anelis Assunção to write the exhibition’s critical text.
“I didn’t want the exhibition to be conceived from a curatorial perspective. So there is no curator, but I wanted someone who had a perspective, a way of imagining the material with me,” he says. “And Anelis has a way of narrating that is somewhere between reality and delirium. And I discover, even anchored in the reality of the material, other paths that it, the material, can take in the imagination.” Scheduled to be released in February, the publication will also include texts by Hélio Menezes and Diane Lima, who were part of the curatorial quartet of the 35th São Paulo Biennial, philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentine Umansky, curator of the Tate.
À arte!brasileiros, Valentine states that she is “impressed by the elemental quality of Luana Vitra’s works, which often seem driven by a fundamental energetic force”. And she previews the first sentence of her text in the book to be released:
I fell into Luana Vitra's work like someone who falls into a trap. Up to my knees. With my head down. My foot got caught in her net, and I couldn't escape. I didn't know her. But I couldn't resist. Like iron in stones, it penetrated my blood and taught me to rust.
LUANA AND MUPA
Gabriela Bettega highlights that the drawings and sculptures in the exhibition, made of iron, copper, lead, brass and steel, resonate with the objects in the collection, but at the same time subvert their conventional readings. “The interaction between Luana’s work and the MUPA collection not only provokes new ways of seeing the territory and its remains, but also questions how the past is narrated and which voices, human or mineral, are silenced or amplified, placing the museum as a living space of resignification.”
It is worth remembering that, in recent years, MUPA has embraced proposals that encourage interdisciplinary dialogue and the articulation of different fields of knowledge. In this sense, Richard Romanini, Artistic Director of MUPA, believes that Luana's work broadens these perspectives by proposing new ways of thinking about the relationship between past, present and future, enriching the possibilities for engaging with the public and addressing the issues that shape the territory and the institution's contemporary practices.
“Luana Vitra’s exhibition is in line with the path taken by MUPA since 2019 by reinforcing and expanding the museum’s proposal as a space for critical and interdisciplinary reflection on multiple historical and cultural narratives. Her work resonates with this approach by exploring narratives that span time and space, promoting reflections on history, territory and memory,” she ponders.
Romanini also emphasizes that Luana invites the public to see the soil as “a living entity,” full of voices and layers of meaning. “This gesture directly dialogues with MUPA’s practice of continually revisiting its collection and memory, while proposing new ways of telling stories and integrating contemporary and ancestral knowledge.”
Luana concludes that it is very interesting to observe when people look at her creations and do not necessarily ask me what they are. “They start to imagine what it could be. My work is on this edge of abstraction, a field that opens up for people to reflect and unravel what it could be,” she says.
