Luana Vitra Contagem, b. 1995

Luana Vitra was born and raised in the state of Minas Gerais, in a region known for its monumental landscapes and deeply marked by the industrial activities of mining. She has always experienced vast visual fields and the various possible manifestations of iron and soot, incorporating into her perception the balance between extractivist brutality and geological time. Raised between woodworking — through her father — and handling words — through her mother — her practice originates from processes that study both the physicality and the subtle contours of materials, interested in the multiple capacities of materials and the psycho-emotional infusion of certain landscapes. Through sculptures, installations, and performances — produced with a wide range of elements and techniques — the artist creates formal games that reconfigure universal symbols and everyday objects to draw relations between the tangible and the subjective, evoking poetry, metabolizing biographical issues, and generating political commentary. In her approach, each material carries its own density, whether physical, historical, or spiritual, and is incorporated into larger systems through construction and deconstruction gestures — such as fittings, welds, braids, cuts, and ruptures. Between intuition and rigor, fragility and resistance, permanence and dissolution, her compositions offer figures and metaphors, as well as abstract forms, activating reflections and sensations about the earth’s time, the human condition, and the continuous flows of life transformation.

Her solo exhibitions include: “Amulets” (2025, SculptureCenter, New York – United States); “The beads of my rosary are artillery bullets” (2024, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam – Netherlands); “Mineral Rising” (2023, Mendes Wood DM, New York – United States); “Giro” (2023, Inhotim, Brumadinho – Brazil); “Viver e morrer pela boca” (2023, Galeria Bruno Múrias, Lisbon – Portugal); “Três Guerras no Peito” (2019, Centro Cultural São Paulo - CCSP, São Paulo – Brazil). Her works have been featured in group exhibitions such as the Sharjah Biennial “To Carry” (2025, Sharjah – United Arab Emirates), Foundation for Contemporary Art - Ghana “Delay and encounter and/or other proximate unknowns” (2023, Accra – Ghana), the 35th São Paulo Biennial “Coreografias do Impossível” (2023, São Paulo – Brazil), “Direito à forma” (2023, Inhotim, Brumadinho – Brazil), “Dos Brasis” (2023, Sesc Belenzinho, São Paulo – Brazil), Prêmio Pipa 2023 Exposição dos premiados (2023, Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro – Brazil), “Histórias Brasileiras” (2022, MASP, São Paulo – Brazil), “Carolina Maria de Jesus: um Brasil para os brasileiros” (2021, IMS, São Paulo – Brazil), “Corpocontinente” (2021, Mitre Galeria, Belo Horizonte – Brazil), and “Casa Carioca” (2020, Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro – Brazil).