Luana Vitra: Amulets

Luana Vitra’s practice is entwined with her home region of Minas Gerais, Brazil—a leading exporter of iron and other minerals that recur across her practice. Through an abstract language that encompasses drawing, performance, sculpture, and installation, her work is interested in the metallurgical and transformative charge of these elements and their capacity for metamorphosis. She creates a dialogue between their natural and industrial manifestations and, more recently, their spiritual dimension.

Her practice is rooted in the philosophical and spiritual traditions of the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, which often regard the land as an ancestor. This exhibition expands on recent projects focused on materializing the energetic force and symbolism of natural matter such as stone, clay, and sand. Here, Vitra understands minerals to be mediators between secular and spiritual worlds and as mediums for “receiving, storing, transforming, and settling energies,” giving them shape in a new sculptural installation.

Amulets opens with an ultramarine curtain wall—a hue that is connected to lapis lazuli, a mineral often used for spiritual rituals. Through the ground floor space, clay vessels made in Minas Gerais by elder ceramic artisans are wrapped in white fabric, secured with knotted ties and pinned iron nails. These are influenced by nkisi nkonde sculptures, a sacred Kongo ritual object. The sculptures often include half-inserted blades, which may represent a vow or legal agreement. Vitra’s use of nails and knots embodies the ethos of sealing, an affirmation of the amulet charm’s energy or the binding of a wish.

The standing iron sculptures, which first appeared to her in dreams, are manifestations of what Vitra imagines as the mineral spirit’s bodily form; the surrounding sand protects the flow of their movement. Pendulums are often used to measure time, gravity, or energy shifts, and the large ones that hang here are used to assess a body’s energy, like a thermometer.

In Amulets, Vitra invites visitors to look beyond the material properties of minerals and their circulation as commodities and to envision the spiritual dimension to which they belong. The forms she brings forth become visual prayers, manifestations, or incantations.

Luana Vitra: Amulets is organized by Jovanna Venegas, Curator.

On the occasion of the exhibition, SculptureCenter will publish the first English-language catalog of the artist's work (to be released in spring 2025). It will include a commissioned essay by Gabi Ngcobo, Director, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam; an interview between Luana Vitra and Diane Lima, an independent curator and writer based in New York; and a curatorial text by exhibition curator Jovanna Venegas. The publication is designed by Studio Lhooq.