Luana Vitra (BR, 1995)
Residency period: May-July 2024
luanavitra.com
When I applied for a residency at La Becque, I was interested in getting back into dance and performance, but with the desire to imagine how these practices could take place within my installations. I was interested in digging deeper into my research on the physical, chemical, and spiritual dynamics of elements from the mineral world, by bringing together actions, gestures, or media that were initially separate in my work.
During the residency, I did a performance using iron grains at Liste Art Fair Basel, and with those same grains combined with magnets and iron bars I also got the chance to create a small installation. For me, it was special to see how the iron grains, which still held a very recent memory of my movements over them, were able to dance afterward without me being there, thanks to the attraction created by the magnets on that material.
One special and totally unexpected aspect of the residency was a collaboration with the sound artist duos Rizomagic and Time is Away. So, in the end, besides exploring questions about the spirit of iron and the desire of iron, I also got to hear the sounds that this material produces and see how these sounds can rearrange themselves when they encounter other minds, other perspectives.
It was a very special and fertile time. — Luana Vitra
Born in Brazil in 1995, artist, dancer, and performer Luana Vitra grew up in Contagem (where she still lives and works today), a region heavily affected by industrial mining activities. Deeply marked by the smells and omnipresence of iron and soot in her childhood environment, Vitra went on to develop an artistic practice that focuses on the psycho-emotional infusion of landscapes and the subtleties of the materials that compose them to find a form of survival and healing. Combining a wide variety of natural and transformed objects and materials, Vitra’s installations address themes of the environment, racial justice, and the re-examination of history, evoking a form of poetry while raising and confronting political issues.
Luana Vitra, La Becque, 2024, photo Matthieu Croizier and Aurélien Haslebacher
Luana Vitra, Liste Art Fair Basel, 2024, photo Aurélien Haslebacher