It takes creativity to cook, to work, to be in a relationship, to live. Lidia Lisbôa’s artistic research often reconstructs memory and bodies prior to the present moment, exploring several mediums such as sculpture, drawing, installation, and performance in an expanded understanding of what sewing is. Birth and transformation are recurring themes in her works, whose titles often include words like ‘womb’ and ‘cocoon’. In the series Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo [Breasts that nursed the world] (2015–25), Lisbôa pays homage to those who breastfeed and motherhood at large with gigantic structures of breasts in different colours. The works are voluminous crochet pieces that establish a territory of active welcome but are also multiple and strange bodies that exceed themselves, inseparable from the world. The scraps emerge and plunge back into a network of close knots, made to be seen. More than that, just as mothers give their milk to babies and thus share with them life in its essence, the patch here is the reason for and origin of the entire work. It’s impossible to know where one fabric ends and the other begins, but there are distinctions between them. They support and form the chest through which one strand, which touches the ground, and four others, which remain suspended, flow towards the earth. By weaving stories instead of narrating them linearly, Lisbôa reverberates common anxieties, fears, and desires, often hidden or concealed by society. Whether in installations, ceramics, or drawings, Lisbôa’s works insistently extend her own political, sensual, and artistic body, constituting a presence that spreads and unreservedly occupies the space around her.

WORK IN THE EXHIBITION:

Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo (2025), crochet, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Almeida & Dale. Commissioned by Fundação Bienal de São Paulo for th 36th Bienal