There’s something profoundly ritualistic and fascinatingly alchemical in the way in which Brazilian artist Luana Vitra engages minerals and natural supplies in her apply. For her New York institutional debut that coincided with a solo presentation at Frieze New York with Mitre Gallery, she reworked SculptureCenter right into a ritual website the place enigmatic totemic kinds channel ancestral energies, charging the area with an uncanny, sacred presence. These auratic sculptures hover in a dialectic, animated by the strain between transcendence and groundedness. Mineral sedimentations unfold throughout the ground like devotional choices—amulets of formality gestures marking a threshold between the bodily and the religious.
Vitra’s apply is deeply rooted in her native Minas Gerais, a mineral-rich area of Brazil traditionally formed by the violent extraction of gold by pressured labor and, at present, dominated by the iron mining trade. Rising up in that setting allowed her to kind an intimate relationship with minerals—particularly iron—that might come to be on the coronary heart of her work. “I actually see the presence of iron as ancestral, and being near it led me to maneuver away from the concept of perceiving it merely as a pure useful resource,” Vitra tells Observer. Iron will not be merely a cloth at her disposal however a companion to her creative language—“one with which I construct the world.”
By way of her relationship with the fabric, Vitra started to acknowledge a deep kinship between human beings and the conduct of metals. “Observing the motion of iron led me to replicate and develop a extra essential perspective by myself historical past,” she says. “Inside this relationship, I started to consider iron as the fabric closest to the Black physique—associating rust with melanin and understanding each as components, within the physique of iron and the human physique, that return them to an concept of origin.”
Vitra engages with supplies holistically. “Earlier than I start making a sculpture or set up, it’s important that I perceive the supplies when it comes to their chemical, bodily and religious actions. As I have interaction with the area and start to sense how these supplies will set up themselves inside it, all of that’s taken under consideration.”
In “Amulets” at SculptureCenter, Vitra focuses on the continual transformation of matter, evoking a way of perpetual flux—energies and substances in fixed states of changing into, dissolving and re-forming. “I used to be enthusiastic about what a ritual of the minerals for the minerals would appear to be,” she explains. “This physique distanced from coexistence with people, these supplies in a relationship of self with self—as a result of, to some extent, once we relate to different types of life, we all the time place them at our service.” For Vitra, the method begins lengthy earlier than the work takes kind: “It’s all the time important to grasp the supplies when it comes to their chemical, bodily and religious actions. As I have interaction with the area, I start to sense how these supplies will set up themselves inside it.”
On the similar time, Vitra’s use of colours like white and blue—tones historically related to the sacred throughout cultures—is deeply intentional and aimed toward enhancing the symbolic and religious aura of the works. The sculptures within the set up embody a dynamic rigidity between ascendant and descendant movement, charged with the interaction of unearthly transcendence and earthly rootedness. In line with Vitra, the particular shade of blue discovered within the feathers is linked to the spirit of metals, whereas white, on a extra private degree, evokes an concept of rebirth.
The compositional construction of the works displays her imaginative and prescient of how minerals may endure religious ascension: “When reflecting on these supplies, I feel the method of mineral ascension will not be essentially upward. I think about it as a very multidirectional motion—one which takes root, that rises, that spreads, that strikes in all instructions.” This imaginative and prescient was deepened by her engagement with the work of Brazilian researcher Tiganá Santana, who research Bantu cosmology. From that, Vitra discovered that religious ascension will not be oriented towards the sky—an idea inherited from European thought—however is as an alternative understood by Bantu folks as multidirectional. “I consider that’s how it will be for minerals,” she says. “In additional dialog, Tiganá instructed me that capoeira is exactly this gesture of listening to the spirituality that rests upon the bottom. I consider this work carries the need to pay attention particularly to that spirituality which, for the Bantu, is the very best type of spirituality—the one which lives on the earth.” Her sculptural compositions are a approach of imagining, manifesting and sometimes directing what such actions could be.
Drawing on minerals’ metallurgical symbolism and transformative potential, Vitra conjures a imaginative and prescient of perpetual flux—matter and power in steady states of changing into, dissolution and reconstitution. As she describes it, in her apply, she seeks the “spirit in matter,” activating these minerals as vessels for receiving, storing and transmitting power—a medium of religious communication and metaphysical presence. “On this exhibition particularly, I used to be enthusiastic about what a ritual of the minerals for the minerals could be like,” she displays. “A physique distanced from coexistence with people, these supplies in a relationship of self with self, as a result of, to some extent, once we relate to different types of life, we all the time place them at our service.” This, she places ahead, is the sort of anthropocentric behavior her apply goals to disrupt. “I by no means view materials by that lens.”
To realize this, Vitra emphasizes the necessity for what she calls “a delicate and, on the similar time, mental creativeness of matter”—an strategy that strikes by research but additionally by instinct and imaginative projection. “From this creativeness, I started to consider some flows of the Earth,” she notes. “It additionally comes from my very own delirium in regards to the materials and my creativeness.”
Within the central piece of the set up at SculptureCenter, Vitra displays on the actions on the Earth’s core. There, iron and nickel spin collectively consistently at a temperature of roughly 2045°C. “It’s a technique of reflection on this circulate of power, this fidelity that, in some unspecified time in the future, may maybe be shared with us by a volcanic eruption or an earthquake. It’s the actions of the Earth that encourage me to consider how sculptures must be organized in area.”
By attuning to and accommodating these forces, the exhibition turns into a website the place one factor turns into one other, partaking and manifesting a steady alchemical flux. “It’s all the time in regards to the magic that already exists throughout the Earth,” Vitra says. “I search different methods to precise this by my encounter with sure supplies.”
A recurring aspect within the exhibition is the pendulum—an instrument historically used to measure the power of the physique and objects, however right here employed by Vitra as a thermometer of the area’s power. Utilizing it on this approach permits her to contemplate mercury and its dynamic affect on her artistic course of: the way it multiplies will in the end have an effect on how she constructs the composition. “Issues are made by these crossings, but additionally by goal components,” she clarifies, pointing to the stones—particularly iron ore—which operate as secure components that regulate the circulate and articulation of forces.
These stones are all the time the primary aspect Vitra locations in her works, forming the muse by which she thinks in regards to the choreography of forces, energies and our bodies. On the similar time, within the set up, Vitra has additionally included sodalite, kyanite and selenite. “A few of these stones are oriented towards psychological stability, others towards religious cleaning,” she says. “This additionally pertains to the sort of power I need to create within the area and the way in which the compositions, to some extent, choreograph the physique of the customer who walks by the exhibition and observes all of it.”
On this sense, Vitra seems to channel power by supplies in a course of that feels, at instances, nearly shamanic in its strategy. As she acknowledges, whereas the energetic dynamic of the exhibition is primarily formed by the properties of the supplies she selects, the symbolic path constructed by them is equally important. “There are moments I need to really feel denser and moments I need to really feel lighter—and all of that is orchestrated by the symbols, along with the supplies themselves,” Vitra explains. “Some supplies carry an power that grounds, pulls downward; others elevate, and all of that is thought-about after I’m creating an set up.”
An analogous philosophical and aesthetic proposition animates Luana Vitra’s works presently on view on the Sharjah Biennial within the U.A.E., the place the artist explores the behaviors and affinities of minerals utilizing magnets to set off reactions and sights that may even substitute soldering. These magnets—composed of iron themselves—create ephemeral bonds between ferrous metals by their pure pull. On this context, Vitra humanizes minerals, suggesting they share behaviors with people: falling in love, drawing collectively, drifting aside. Her work displays on the potential of constructing constructions not by drive, however by mineral want.
On the similar time, by this specific strategy to apply and supplies, Vitra reclaims a ritualistic dimension that has accompanied artmaking since its earliest origins. The works in her set up at SculptureCenter evoke each totemic presences and devotional choices because the exhibition unfolds right into a ritual website and a religious expertise through which viewers are invited to participate.
Because the title of the exhibition suggests, Vitra’s central goal with this exhibition is to ask viewers to acknowledge the magnitude of minerals and break free from the reductive notion of pure assets. “I would like them to see minerals as an alternative as presences that set a sequence of rather more advanced issues in movement,” she says. Though, as she clarifies, the present incorporates just one literal amulet—intentionally hidden—each bit turns into an amulet in its personal proper by the way in which it was made: formed by religious apply, rooted within the traditions of her hometown, and knowledgeable by ancestral information. “My work, basically, is a approach of understanding how gesture and kind can turn into presences that activate therapeutic,” she displays. “The gestures and the materiality converse from a spot the place the connection with the fabric is religious,” Vitra emphasizes that this emerges above all from the methods she interacts with matter. “Presence strikes energies. And on this sense, I form a gesture of understanding—how the energies of the palms and of repetition generate power round issues, and the way these energies turn into seen within the materials by my relationship with the sculptures. In a approach, maybe all of my apply may be understood by this gestural matrix.”
Solely inside this ritualistic framework of “religious gestures” and energetic dynamics are these supplies actually revered and understood of their full magnitude—not diminished to merchandise or assets serving useful roles in society. “My want to work with supplies from this attitude comes from the truth that I all the time need to preserve a relationship of respect with minerals,” Vitra displays. “My want is for this mineral life to be revered, for mineral want to be acknowledged, and for us to create a more healthy coexistence with these presences.”
From this basis, every set up carries meanings that stretch past the religious, opening onto political and financial dimensions that confront the social and environmental violence implied in mineral extraction. “I’ve been deeply shaken by the dynamics of mining—how violent and unbalanced all of it is,” Vitra explains, noting that the mineral trade continues to replicate enduring colonial dynamics. “Once we look, as an example, at mining practices in Central Africa earlier than the interval of enslavement, we discover that these presences weren’t exploited within the unchecked approach they’re at present. There was a priority for sustaining stability between the forces and presences of the world. I really feel that colonization led us to ascertain capitalist relationships with nature, which ultimately prompted a distancing from this concept of stability.” On this sense, Luana Vitra’s work turns into an pressing invitation to replicate on how we’d relate to different types of life—even the inorganic and the mineral—with a special sort of respect.
Luana Vitra’s “Amulets” is on view at SculptureCenter by July 28, 2025.
