Mineral Rising Luana Vitra

Mendes Wood DM New York
30 Apr - 25 May 2024

 

 

Her work emerges from walks around her neighborhood and from observing the transformations of the landscape around her, often taking its cues from childhood memories. During those walks, Vitra pays attention to the chromatic variations of the region - from the earthy or grey tones that characterize the industrial areas to the shades of blue on the horizon. It was during these journeys that she collected materials and other detritus from industrial exploitation that could be transformed into fundamental elements for her repertoire. Iron has acquired a status beyond that of a mere compositional element in her work. She explains, “It is the matter that makes up the ground of the earth that I grew up in, it is the matter with which I feel a kinship.” 

 

Iron guides and sustains her artistic practice. By manipulating it repeatedly, whether in its raw form or mixed with other materials, Vitra regains her complicity with the element. Conceptually, her interest in iron and more recently copper, is related to their conductivity. Vitra questions which other dimensions the conductivity of these materials could operate in. In other words, despite the importance of the physicality of the element itself, the artist increasingly alludes to the invisible, investigating whether these materials can also operate as conductors for less concrete and more ethereal dimensions. This more spiritual take on these elements is a consequence of her installation Lung of the Mine, presented during the São Paulo Biennial in 2023. Drawing from oral stories shared by her relatives about the work of enslaved people in mines, Vitra presented an installation composed of a series of talismanic iron arrows that symbolize the unlocking of paths, pointing to places of prosperity. 

 

While her early works were grounded in the geography of Minas Gerais, the pieces featured in Mineral Rising are mostly the outcome of Vitra’s frequent travels to South Africa, between 2022 and 2024. She believes that growing up surrounded by the many mineral resources of the Brazilian landscape helped foster a strong connection with this far-away country. Living in Durban, on the southeast coast of South Africa, Vitra sought to explore the connections between manual labor and the act of praying, focusing on the notion that objects can act as protective talismans. 

 

She witnessed the technical, aesthetic, and spiritual abilities of the Zulu and Xhosa peoples in crafting their necklaces and other protective objects, devoting much of her time to learning how to create the complex forms. The geometric patterns, the rhythm and the gestural repetition necessary to create each piece serve as a means of infusing enchantment into materials. In her words, “Sculpture is an enchantment of drawing in space. I grew up seeing hands passing through the beads of the rosary, endlessly repeating the same prayer. Spirituality is also the path that hands take on the beads; it is as if these points lead the body to the invisible, nurturing protection and a good path.”  

 

However, despite her forays into the mineral realm, her human connections are firmly rooted in Minas Gerais. It was with her father, a carpenter, through whom Vitra had her first encounters with the processes of material transformation, while it was with her mother, a teacher and poet, that she developed a desire to find forms capable of mediating the different relationships between the materials and the ideas that flow around her.