Helena Almeida : Inhabited drawings / Desenhos Habitados

27 Mar-22 May 2015

Overview

This is the first London show dedicated to Helena Almeida, one of the leading female artists working in Europe during the ‘70s and ‘80s. The exhibition presents a selection of works from some of her most iconic series from the period. Almeida has twice represented Portugal at the Venice Biennial (1982 and 2005) and she will be the subject of a forthcoming touring retrospective at the Serralves Foundation, Porto (2015), Jeu de Paume, Paris (2016), Wiels, Bruxelles (2016) and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo (2017). Throughout her career Almeida has continuously explored and questioned traditional media, breaking away from the pictorial plane by placing her body as the subject of her work – or as her titles suggest, by “inhabiting” them. Almeida’s body, often clad in black, performs carefully choreographed movements in dialogue with simple, everyday objects.