Laura Lima: Literal Ballet

Laura Lima: Literal Ballet presents the work of the artist Laura Lima, in her installation at the Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum (MACBA). In the installation, works, objects, pictures, poetical and political sentences, suspended in wires, cross the museum in a structure of bicycles and pulleys put into motion by the Syndicat, a team visible by the visitors. A choreography built on the air, with collective agency, Balé literal invites the spectator to participate in this dance from the position they occupy in the space.

The book features images of Balé literal being exhibited, drawings and projects, as well as the writing printed in the weavings included in the structure. The images are accompanied by an essay by Tania Rivera about the work’s insertion in contemporary Brazil and the games of power represented in it, and an essay any Marcia Tiburi that analyses, among other issues, the political aspect of Balé literal, inserted in the country's moment in time, when freedom was under threat and culture, under attack. The book also includes an interview with the artist by Elvira Dyangani Ose, curator of the exhibit and MACBA director.

Excerpts
“To display things – images and objects of art – traditionally involves reaffirming the axis between a horizontal and vertical coordinate, and fixing a reified and fetishised work on it. Exhibiting is thus always an operation of power that determines what can and should not be seen, confirming the institutional place of art, and establishing the identity of each object and its author, while at the same time hiding the collective work that provides its foundation. Such a structure appears predetermined and immutable, and undoubtedly corresponds to society’s own order. Yet Lima’s work here is to provoke that structure and put it in crisis. What if we viewed her work as a chessboard? And what if art could effect displacements on it, moving the pieces in unusual ways, using other gestures and words?” Tania Rivera

“Balé literal, by Laura Lima is a performative, theatrical and architectural work, composed of a multiplicity of visual works – many of them sculptures and objects that function as readymades or, by nature of their presence, as anti-readymades. These readymades are stripped of their function as things, and they bear ‘unfinishes’, or ‘anti-finishes’, affirming that processes precede results, just as existence precedes essence.” Marcia Tiburi

About the artist
Ever since she let a cow loose in Ipanema beach in the 1990s, Laura Lima has presented a body of work composed by what she sometimes describes as “images". Continually evading easy classification, Laura Lima’s “images” aren’t “performances nor installations nor cinema”, but attempts to visually articulate in concrete reality a personal glossary of concepts that the artist works and reworks throughout her over 20 years of career. Another part of Lima’s oeuvre relates to the notion of ornamental philosophy. In works such as Costumes, Galinhas de gala and Ouro flexível, Lima directly challenges the conventional vision of ornamentation as something strange or unimportant. Lima's work tries to propose new understandings of accepted definitions and concepts, destabilizing and subverting what's seen as a given.
Born in 1971, Laura Lima grew up in Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais. At a young age, she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she lives and works to this day. Lima got a degree in Philosophy from Rio de Janeiro State University in the 1990s and studied at the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts, also in Rio de Janeiro. In 1999, she founded Organismo RhR (Representativo hífen Representativo) and acted as its first administrator. In 2003, she cofounded, alongside Ernesto Neto and Marcio Botner, A Gentil Carioca, an artist-directed gallery in Rio de Janeiro, and she's in the board to this day.
Laura Lima won the BACA, Bonnefanten Contemporary Art Award, Holland, in 2014; and, in 2007, the Marcantonio Vilaça Award. She has also been nominated for the Francophone 2011 Award and the 2012 Hans Nefkens Award.
Laura Lima’s works are in the collections of Instituto Inhotim, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Hammer Museum, Bonniers Konsthall, Museu Migros fur Gegenwartskunst, Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Coleção Zabludowicz, Bonnefantenmuseum, and other institutions.

Specifications
Title Laura Lima: Balé literal
[Laura Lima: Literal Ballet]
Artist Laura Lima
Complementary writing Elvira Dyangani Ose,
Marcia Tiburi and Tania Rivera
Language Portuguese and English
Page count 288
Publisher Cobogó
Co-publisher MACBA
ISBN 978-65-5691-158-8
Design project Bloco Gráfico
Format Softcover
Size 16.6 × 24.4 cm
Year 2025
Price R$ 168.00