Studio grant holder in Stockholm 4 June – 29 August 2022

Lais Myrrha is an artist who lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. She investigates instruments and forms of knowledge that build and mediate our experience in the world we occupy, highlighting the arbitrary nature and power of speech, which conventions and systems of representation lay out for us to see. Fundamentally,
her works are divided into four zones, which often intersect: Atlas, Zona de instabilidade (Instability Zone), Estudos de caso (Case Studies) and Crônicas (Chronicles). The first, Atlas, comprises a series of works with maps, measuring instruments, dictionaries, almanacs and books, in which she intervenes to create comments that make visible, thus, thinkable, the modes and systems of representation, as well as their parameters and milestones. The Instability Zone is made up of works in which permanence and balance seem flawed and/or precarious. Case Studies highlight elements of (Brazilian) architecture and of modernism, less for reasons related to architecture itself than for the iconicity of the images produced by these constructions, and their use as a projective machine of power phantasmagoria. Finally, the Chronicles are visual and textual comments on events observed in daily life, either commuting through the city in which she lives or the places she passes through, or in the news. An important element in her creative process, which runs through all the areas mentioned above, is her trust in the capacity of the precise use and choice of materials and means to produce signs and to condense narratives.

Photo: Lais Myrrha

Lais Myrrha has a Master’s degree (2007) from the Escola de Belas Artes, UFMG. and a BA in visual arts from Escola Guignard, UEMG (2001). She has won several awards, including the I Bolsa Pampulha (2003), I Concurso Itamaraty de Arte Contemporânea, Brasília (2011) and the Arte e Patrimônio Award. She participated in the Temporada de Projetos at Paço das Artes, in São Paulo, and the 8th Bienal do Mercosul, in Porto Alegre (2011). In 2013, participated in the 18th edition of the Festival Internacional de Arte Contemporânea do Videobrasil, and in the group exhibition Blind Field at the Karnnet Museum, Illinois/USA. In 2014, she carried out the Gameleira 1971 Project at Pivô, São Paulo. In 2016, she presented a work for a public space at the New Cities Future Ruins, Dallas/USA and was featured atthe 32nd Bienal de Arte de São Paulo with the work Dois pesos, duas medidas, commissioned by the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo. In 2017, she was exhibited at the Avenida Paulista collective show at MASP (São Paulo) and also participated in the collective exhibition Condemned To Be Modern | PST: LA / LA. In 2018, she showed an unpublished work commissioned by the Gwagju Biennial Foundation for the 12th Gwagju Biennale. In 2019, she participated in the 13th Bienal La Hababa. In 2020, she took part in the exhibition Infinito Vão, at SESC, May 24, in São Paulo.