Lucia Laguna

Lucia Laguna paints from the environs of the suburb where she lives — the Rio de Janeiro Rocha neighborhood —, collaging references originated from art history, her atelier’s garden and an extensive view of the city. Between figuration and abstraction, the paintings collected in this book whisper the disordered insistence of life from flowers, leaves and twigs, contra urban lines: the train line, the sea line, Linha Vermelha, Linha Amarela, Avenida Brasil.

Edited by curator Marcelo Campos, this volume draws a panorama of the artist’s career, divided in three parts referring to the categories — or work spheres — which title Lucia Laguna’s painting series: “Landscape and Architecture”, “Garden and World”, and “Studio and Window”.

The bilingual edition also features three previously unpublished essays. In “The Artist with Open Windows”, writer and historian Luiz Antonio Simas writes about the genealogy of Rocha and the influence of the suburbs, seen through atelier windows, in Laguna’s oeuvre. In “In Search of Laguna’s Garden”, curator Diane Lima focuses on the artist’s relationship to the great painting masters, as well as with her own garden, in addition to exploring her pictorial procedures. Marcelo Campos, who edited the publication, builds in “Crossing Banal Worlds” an essay where he articulates fundamental elements to understand the painter’s oeuvre: the observation of daily life, the influence of the city’s geography, her method and discipline, and her references to art history.

The correspondences are endless, and the act of writing about Lucia Laguna’s calls on us to undo misconceptions. To approach this oeuvre (consisting of more than a hundred paintings) is also to live the city, to search for reflection in the backyard gardens and, meanwhile, to assume the mobility that eliminates any repression previously stimulated by a comparison of nationalism and internationalism, of figuration and abstraction. To be able to write about an artist in keeping with her vigorous creation, simultaneously with her work process, makes us reconsider the historical habits that have made the work of past women artists to be destined only for a rediscovery. Here, life and oeuvre show us a history of conquests honed by the desire to move forward, to stay, to want to be, to livewrite, as in the words of Conceição Evaristo. — Marcelo Campos

About the artist
Lucia Laguna was born in Campos dos Goytacazes in 1941. She lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Lucia was still a Portuguese teacher when she conducted her Lygia Pape-like experiences, without a clue that she was already an artist: she took her students to a dark room, where she placed jars of water, alcohol, sand, salt, and other elements. The idea was to make them use other senses, instead of vision, to stimulate language and, in doing so, improving their writing. Laguna lives and works in São Francisco Xavier, but her mind and eyes come and go, looking inside and out. Way beyond a formal or social attempt, Laguna’s paintings are about visual dialogue, between her gestures and her assistants’. Davi Baltar, Claudio Tobinaga and Thiago Pereira begin the narratives, where she then comes in, in a dance of shapes, colors and symbols. If the future is collective, it is already here. And if these works can be summed up in a word, it’s “generosity”.

About the editor
Marcelo Campos was born in Rio de Janeiro, where he lives and works. He is Chief Curator of the Rio Art Museum (MAR), Director of the Cultural Department of Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), and member of the boards of the Imperial Palace Museum and the Bispo do Rosário Museum of Contemporary Art. Since 2004 he has curated various exhibitions, such as To Northeast Brazil (SESC 24 de Maio, 2019); Rio and Samba (MAR, 2018); Orixás (France-Brazil Cultural Center, 2016); and Bispo do Rosário, One Nook, Two Hinterlands (Bispo do Rosário Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015). He holds a PhD in visual arts from the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and is professor in the Department of Theory and History of Art at the Institute of Art of UERJ and the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts. Campos is the author of Escultura contemporânea no Brasil: Reflexões em dez percursos Contemporary Sculpture in Brazil: Reflections on Ten Trajectories and has published work on Brazilian art in numerous books, catalogues, and Brazilian and international journals.

About the authors
Diane Lima is from Bahia and divides her time between Salvador and S o Paulo. She is a curator, writer, and researcher. She holds a master s degree in communication and semiology from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP) and teaches in the Specialization Course in Contemporary Cultural Management at Itaú Cultural. Her lectures, articles, and papers have been presented at such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, NYC), Pérez Art Museum Miami, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute, Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art (MAM Rio), and São Paulo Art Museum (MASP), among others. Her projects are marked by pioneering debate on artistic and curatorial practices from a decolonial perspective in Brazilian institutions. She is the co-curator of the exposition “Frestas” – 3rd Arts Triennial, SESC-SP – The River is a Serpent, and of the monographic exhibits Vuadora, by artist Paulo Nazareth (Pivô, 2021), and Stella do Patrocínio: The Story That Speaks (Bispo do Rosário Museum, 2021). She is also guest researcher/curator in the Program for Critical Curatorship and Decolonial Art Studies at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC-USP), in partnership with the Getty Foundation.

Luiz Antonio Simas was born in Rio de Janeiro, where he lives and works. He is a writer, professor, historian, educator, and composer. He is the author and coauthor of more than twenty books and more than a hundred essays and articles on carnivals, popular festivals, macumbas, football, and street cultures. He was a columnist for the newspaper O Dia and member of the jury for the Gold Banner, the carnival prize awarded by the newspaper O Globo. He received the Jabuti Prize for Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2016 for Dicionário da história social do samba [Dictionary of the Social History of Samba], written in partnership with Nei Lopes. He was shortlisted for the Jabuti Prize in 2018 and 2020 in the Chronicles category. In another collaboration with Nei Lopes, he wrote the textual curatorship for the exhibit Semba/Samba: Bodies and Passages – Brazil and Africa (Samba Museum, 2021).

Specifications
Title Lucia Laguna
Author Marcelo Campos, Diane Lima, Luiz Antonio Simas
Editor Marcelo Campos
Language Portuguese, English
Page count 224
ISBN 978-65-5691-048-2
Cover and design Bloco Gráfico
Format Hardcover
Size 21 x 26
Year 2021